


Softer Than Shadow

by redseeker



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Haunted Houses, Horror, M/M, Romance, Sleep Paralysis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27211168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redseeker/pseuds/redseeker
Summary: Looking to mend their troubled relationship, Waylon and Lisa Park move across the country to make a new start. Their new home has everything going for it: a picturesque town, fresh country air, good schools. It's perfect... until, that is, Waylon starts to experience strange goings-on and to see things that shouldn't be there, forcing him to find out the truth about his new forever-home and the dark secrets it hides.
Relationships: Eddie Gluskin/Waylon Park, Lisa Park/Waylon Park
Comments: 28
Kudos: 137
Collections: Spook Me Ficathon 2020





	1. For Sale: (Probably) Not Haunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone and an early happy Halloween to all! This spooky little story is just-about complete, and I'll be posting the rest of the chapters over the course of this week. Enjoy :D

It was a beautiful day in early fall when Waylon pulled the SUV into the driveway of the Park family’s new home. The house sat back from the road, beyond an overgrown front yard and flanked by mature trees, already sporting their autumnal reds and golds. The sky was blue and cloudless, and as Waylon got out of the car he heard birds twittering in the trees. He breathed in a deep lungful of crisp mountain air and grinned.

The kids piled out of the backseat, eager to get out of the stuffy car after hours on the road and dashed past Waylon towards the front door. “Slow down!” Lisa, Waylon’s wife, yelled after them, but the boisterous twin boys paid her no heed. She rounded the car and stood at Waylon’s side. He wrapped an arm around her waist.

“Well? What do you think?”

“I think it’s a fixer-upper,” Lisa said. When Lisa had informed Waylon that she needed to relocate for work, he had bent to the task of finding somewhere for his family to live. Their budget was tight, so when he had seen this house online going for a steal, he had snapped it up. And true, maybe it didn’t look quite like the pictures, but it was still beautiful in its own way. The paint on the balustrades and woodwork was flaking, the roof was missing a few shingles, and the yard was a jungle, but it was theirs. It was a fresh start, a chance to start all over again, and that was something that he could not put a price on.

Dinner that night was take-out pizza eaten amid a forest of boxes, all four of them together just like old times, laughing and joking, just enjoying being together. Waylon put the boys to bed and then joined Lisa in their new bedroom. He smiled tiredly as he shut the bedroom door. “Mikey took a while to settle,” he explained as he tiptoed across the room, undressing as he went. “New house, new town. Plus it was a long day.”

“I’m surprised there were no tantrums,” said Lisa.

“I think they’re just too tired.” He walked into Lisa’s arms and kissed her. She ran her fingers through his hair and then pulled him down onto the bed. “But I’m not too tired,” Waylon teased.

Lisa quirked an eyebrow at him and smiled. She had always had a smile that could light up a room, and Waylon had seen it far too seldom of late. “I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Because I intend to keep you up very late indeed…”

* * *

Waylon finally fell asleep sometime around midnight, pleasantly tired and replete and with Lisa resting in his arms.

He awoke to darkness and silence and an inexplicable sense of dread. The illuminated face of the bedside clock told him it was around 3AM. Beside him, Lisa had rolled out of his arms and was snoring softly. He rose from the bed and pulled on a robe, and then tiptoed out the door and down the hall to the kids’ room. Michael and Aiden were sharing a room for now, just until they unpacked completely. He eased open their door and saw both boys sleeping soundly in their beds. Their night-light projected a starry cartoon sky upon the ceiling. Waylon watched them for a while, unable to shake the sense of danger that chased him out of sleep. He wanted to creep closer to check they really were breathing, verify with his own eyes that nothing had happened to them, but Michael chose that moment to roll over in his sleep. Waylon sighed. His boys were fine, and Waylon was just worrying because so much was riding on this move.

He was just about to head back to bed when a noise from downstairs made every hair on his body stand up. Very carefully, he crept to the top of the stairs. Now that he listened closely, he could hear the faint notes of muffled music. Had one of the boys left their tablet on downstairs? Youtube would just continue playing those inane videos for hours if you let it. Waylon went downstairs as quietly as he could, but when he reached the ground floor, he realised the music was coming not from the living room or kitchen but from the basement. The door under the stairs had been firmly shut and locked all day, but now it stood ajar and the padlock lay a couple of feet away on the floor.

He cautiously eased the door open fully and reached for the lights. The switch didn’t work,. It must need a new bulb, Waylon thought, making a mental note to fix it the next day. Lit only by the faint moonlight coming in the entry hall windows, the basement stairs looked like the entrance to an impenetrably dark pit. He retrieved a flashlight from the kitchen and returned to the top of the steps. The flashlight beam didn’t do much to dispel the spooky atmosphere, but at least he wouldn’t break his neck on the stairs. The boys must have sneaked down here while playing hide-and-seek or something and left something playing. The music was clearly audible now, although crackly and fuzzy as though playing on an old-timey radio. He made his careful way down the steps that creaked under his weight. The basement was jam-packed full of stuff the house’s previous owners had left behind. There were stacks of boxes, piles of old toys, damaged furniture; decades of unwanted detritus just thrown down here to moulder. He found the source of the music, a little battery-operated radio on top of a crate. He turned it off and turned to go back upstairs, already planning on lecturing the boys in the morning.

He had just put his foot on the lowest stair when the music started up again. It was the same song as before, with the same crackly sound distorting the jaunty melody. _“Mother dear looks up at Dad with love light in her eye,”_ sang the tinny voice through the radio’s tiny speakers. _“He steals a kiss, a fond embrace—”_ Waylon turned the radio off with a decisive _click_ , and then took the batteries out for good measure. As he set the radio down another noise started up, this time a mechanical whirring. Waylon whirled around and the beam of his flashlight played shakily over the stacks and shelves of junk. The basement was a maze that seemed to go on forever, and the sound was coming from deep within.

He cast a glance up the stairs to where the door still stood open. He could go back to bed and pretend this was all a dream. Perhaps it was. He could go and find his phone and all the police… and tell them what? That there was an intruder in his house? He had no proof of that. He was too old to be afraid of things going bump in the night. It was probably just some old machinery that was acting up. He steadied his hand and plunged deeper into the dark.

As he got closer, he recognised the sound. His mother had altered and mended enough of his clothes growing up—he’d been a small and weedy kid up until his big growth-spurt when he was fifteen, so everything always needed shortening and taking in—to recognise the sound of a sewing machine starting and stopping. He squeezed through a gap between two sets of shelves and shone his flashlight into the void beyond. It picked out, in washed-out grey, a worktable pushed against the far wall and beside it an antique sewing machine. Its treadle moved back and forth on its own, the wheel on the side spinning away. “What the fuck?” Waylon whispered, and the machine fell silent. Waylon cast the beam of his torch left and right. Did he just see something move?

He heard a creak behind him and spun around. Just then his flashlight started to flicker and fail. _Oh no, no, no. Fuck!_ An instant later he was plunged into full darkness. _Great_ , he thought. _Of fucking course._ He shook the flashlight and banged it against his palm in an attempt to force it back to life. There came that creak again, now from over to his right, like a step upon an old floorboard. Waylon’s breathing was loud in the silence, his heart pounded in his chest. He’d gotten turned around and the darkness was so complete he couldn’t tell which was was out any more. He swallowed thickly, gripped the flashlight tight as if he could use it as a weapon, and quietly took one step backward, and then another, keeping his eyes open wide to try to spot even the tiniest movement in the black… until his back bumped up against something. Waylon froze and held his breath.

Cold air gusted against the back of his neck.

His flashlight chose that moment to come back to life, and Waylon whirled around, brought the light up—and screamed. A face leered at him out of the darkness, a monstrous face with wide eyes and a dreadful grin, white skin blotched with blood.

Waylon bolted.

Somehow he made it back to the staircase, knocking over stacks of boxes and crashing into shelves as he went. He took the basement stairs two at a time and slammed the door shut behind him when he reached the top. His legs gave out, and he slid down to sit on the floor with his back against the door. He remembered the padlock and hastily secured the door. He sat there a while longer, breathing hard, until he started to shake. Then he forced himself to his feet and went to find his phone.

The police didn’t find anyone in the basement. Waylon had heard stories of people living in the walls of people’s homes undetected for months, or squatters hiding out in cellars and attics and coming out at night to cause mischief. The cops were very tolerant with him when he described the intruder, wrote notes in their little books and everything, even though Waylon could see in their eyes they thought the same as Lisa: that Waylon had an overactive imagination and an anxious temperament. “You need to spend less time on Reddit,” Lisa told him. “That sounds like something straight out of No Sleep.”

“Let’s Not Meet,” Waylon corrected absently, and she gave him a disapproving look. It was clear she thought he had wasted all their time over a bad dream, and he wasn’t going to push his luck.

After that night he kept the basement door padlocked and kept the key in a drawer in the kitchen. He decided to put the whole incident out of his mind. God knew he was busy enough: between caring for the boys and getting them enrolled in a local school, unpacking and setting up the house, and work, Waylon had his hands full. Lisa spent the weekdays at the office while Waylon worked from home, and since he was home all day the bulk of the housework and childcare fell to him as well. He squeezed in hours of work whenever he could, keeping an odd schedule, and soon he was too busy and tired to spare much thought to that peculiar night. Lisa acted like it had never happened, so Waylon endeavoured to do the same,… so when objects mysteriously went missing around the house or he walked through a cold spot that chilled his very bones, he told himself he was just absent-minded, and this was an old house with inconsistent heating.

And for couple of weeks, this worked. Mikey and Aiden started going to the local middle school, Waylon got a home office set up in sunny room that overlooked the backyard. Lisa worked long hours, so Waylon picked the kids up from school and gave them their dinner, then greeted Lisa when she came home with a kiss and a glass of wine. Things were better than they had been in months; Lisa was happy at her new office, the boys were already making friends, and Waylon felt some of the terrible weight that had been burdening him finally lift. This was just what they had needed: a fresh start, a chance to do things over and do it right this time.

* * *

He was raking leaves in the front garden one Friday afternoon when a man approached from the street. He was dressed in a red duffel coat and carried a casserole dish in his gloved hands. Waylon straightened, leaning on his rake. The stranger grinned from behind a bushy grey beard, and, after shifting the casserole to the crook of one arm, thrust out his hand for Waylon to shake.

“So you’re the new neighbours,” he said by way of greeting. “I gotta admit, I didn’t think anyone would take on that house after what happened.” Waylon’s eyebrows rose, but the man kept talking. He was standing just a little too close, and Waylon subtly took a step back. “I’m Frank, Frank Manera. I live in the next house down, the old farmhouse.” He motioned with his head. The nearest house was a ten-minute drive down the lane, separated from the Park residence by an expanse of woodland. Now Waylon glanced behind Frank he saw a red pickup parked at the kerb.

“Just thought I’d stop by and say hello,” Frank was saying. “Woulda come earlier but I’ve been outta town. So, how’re you likin’ Leadville?”

“It’s nice,” said Waylon. “Definitely a change of pace.” The house was on the outskirts of town, but Leadville itself was a charming tourist trap filled with picturesque old buildings and locals who said hello to each other on the street. It was a far cry from life in the city, but Waylon already thought he could settle in here. “I’m Waylon Park, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you, Waylon. This is for you.” He gave Waylon the casserole. “Just a little something to welcome ya to the neighbourhood.”

“Thank you. I’ll make sure to tell my wife, Lisa, that you stopped by.”

“You do that,” Frank said with a grin. “You and the Missus should swing by the farmhouse some time, I’d love to have you for dinner.”

“That would be great. Uh, what did you mean when you said ‘what happened’? Did something bad happen in the house, or…?”

“What? Oh, don’t worry about that,” Frank blustered. “If your realtor didn’t tell you then it ain’t important.” He flashed Waylon another wide, toothy smile and clapped him on the shoulder. “See you around Park.”

* * *

Later, when Waylon told Lisa about his strange meeting with their neighbour, she shrugged off his discomfort and told him the man was just being friendly. “Honestly, Waylon, he’s probably lived out here all on his own for years,” she told him. “He’s probably just hurting for company.”

“But what do you think he meant?” Waylon pressed. “I can’t find anything online about something bad happening here.”

“For all we know he was talking about the financial crisis,” Lisa said with a roll of her eyes. “We know this place has been vacant for a while. They probably couldn’t sell it.” When Waylon frowned at her, she sighed and said, “If you’re really worried about it why don’t you call Pauline and ask her?”

Pauline was the agent who had sold them the house. “I thought of that already,” said Waylon. “She’s out of the office.”

“Well there you go, then,” said Lisa, as if it was all settled. “There’s no point worrying about it.”

Waylon wanted to share her confidence, but when Monday rolled around and he was alone in the house again, it grew harder to keep believing he was _truly_ alone.

It started when he was washing the breakfast dishes in the kitchen sink. His back was to the kitchen door, which opened onto the hallway. At first, he didn’t think anything of the footsteps in the hallway behind him, thinking it was just Lisa or one of the boys. Then he remembered they were all out.

He checked the ground floor with his heart in his throat but found nothing amiss except for a framed photo—a family portrait—knocked over in the living room. He returned to the kitchen and told himself he’d imagined it. Lisa told him herself, he spent too much time on those spooky message-boards.

He heard the footsteps several more times that day. It sounded like someone pacing back and forth, or sometimes prowling from room to room. Whenever Waylon went to check, there was never anyone there. Eventually he holed himself up in his office with his headphones on and worked until it was time to fetch the boys from school.

The strange occurrences only increased from there on. Waylon would hear his invisible house-guest stomping up and down the hall, he would find pictures fallen or turned around, and sometimes he would even catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, like a shadow that disappeared as soon as he tried to focus on it. Doors would slam even though there was no draft. He started to learn where the house’s cold spots tended to be, although sometimes they moved around. Frequently his skin would prickle and come up in goosebumps as though he were being watched.

None of it ever occurred when Lisa and the boys were home, and when he mentioned any of it to Lisa she didn’t want to listen. Her patience didn’t last long, and after she snapped at him to “quit working himself up with ghost stories” he learned to hold his tongue. He knew what she was thinking, what she wouldn’t say. This had happened before.

He had been a teenager at the time. He had heard things that made him think he was going mad and had suffered terrible nightmares and visions. Nothing any doctor did seemed to make a difference, until the whole ordeal had finally culminated in a short and unpleasant stay at an inpatient facility. His family moved not long after that, and Waylon’s symptoms had gone away. He had met Lisa shortly after, and eventually confided in her. She had been his rock in that time, as he recovered from the fear and uncertainty. If it weren’t for her strength he probably would have fallen apart.

Now he wondered if he should call a doctor after all. If he was going mad, didn’t he owe it to his family to nip it in the bud?

But what if they locked him in again? He couldn’t afford to lose the work, and not to mention being separated from his family would be too hard, especially now he and Lisa were making such steps forward in their relationship. Things had been rocky for the last few years, and he was afraid to risk the progress they had made since moving to Colorado. He wanted all their former problems to remain in California, left behind where they belonged.

He spent another fortnight vacillating on the problem, until one night he woke once again to darkness and this time found he could not move. His body was rigid, and his blood hissed in his ears like radio static. The only thing he could move was his eyes, which he darted wildly to-and-fro. His heart was gripped by an icy dread so extreme he feared the organ would burst. He didn’t know what was happening, but he was positive about one thing: someone was in the room, besides he and his wife.

Someone, or some _thing_.

Just moments before he had been deep in a dream the like of which he hadn’t suffered since his teens. In it, he had run through endless corridors and tunnels as terrifying monsters pursued him. The harder he’d tried to escape, the deeper into hell he seemed to run, until at last he had been caught. Pinned down, he was helpless as the creature claimed its prey. It crouched over him, human-shaped but massive, its wild eyes and deranged grin dreadfully familiar…

Sweat dripped off him as a dark shape detached from the thick shadows behind the door. He wanted to scream, to run, he wanted to wake Lisa and tell her to get the hell out. He wanted her to protect him. The shape moved closer and became a figure, humanoid but black as ash, its nude form twisted into strange proportions. Its face was a blank, yet Waylon was certain it was staring straight at him. Waylon couldn’t look away. Tears welled in his eyes and made warm, tickling trails down his temples. He couldn’t explain or understand it, but he was certain this thing meant him harm. It wasn’t human, it wasn’t _possible_ , and he knew surer than he’d ever known anything that it was _evil_.

It neared the bed and then floated over it, until it settled atop Waylon’s chest. Its weight crushed him into the mattress, he couldn’t breathe! It stared down at him with its horrendous black eye-sockets and tilted its head, as though curious. Its eyeless stare went right through him and stripped him down to his bones, down to his soul.

It stayed there for hours. It felt like years he spent pinned by the demon’s empty stare and crushing weight, locked in a frantic state of terror and paralysed until he thought he would break. He fought with all his strength to move, but to no avail.

Until he managed to twitch a finger. Then a toe. He would have whimpered with the effort if he could have made a sound.

Eventually, long after he thought he could endure, he was free. As soon as the demon’s hold broke, he vaulted out of bed only to stumble to the floor. He felt like he’d run a marathon. He was so exhausted he was shaking, and he was drenched in sweat. The creature had vanished, just as inexplicably as it had appeared. He leapt for the bedside lamp and turned it on. The light woke Lisa, who grumbled and shielded her eyes.

“Lisa,” Waylon hissed. Trembling, he crawled back onto the bed and shook his wife’s shoulder. “Lisa wake up. It’s not safe. Lisa, there’s something here.”

“What? Is someone here?”

“Not someone, something! There’s something in the house and it wants to hurt us. Lisa, we have to _go_ —”

“What the fuck, Way?” Lisa blearily sat up. Her hair stuck out around her head in a tangled black halo and she had the texture of her rumpled pillow imprinted on her cheek. “Waylon, calm down. Slow down. You had a dream.”

“No, it wasn’t a dream,” Waylon whispered. “I’ve been trying to tell you there’s something in this house and tonight it was _here_ —”

“Waylon, stop. What time is it?” Lisa glanced at the bedside clock. “Fuck. Waylon, I have work in the morning. I have a presentation.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. You had one of your bad dreams, that’s all. You’ve had sleep paralysis before. Remember? It’s not real. Now please can you shut up about it so I can go back to sleep? You don’t understand the kind of stress I’m under, the last thing I need is your paranoia ruining everything. I thought you were over this, Waylon. I thought you were better.”

Shame speared through Waylon’s chest. It wasn’t often Lisa held his past struggles with mental health against him, but every time she did it felt like a shard of glass to the heart.

Without waiting for a reply, Lisa reached across the bed and turned off the lamp. Then she rolled over, pulled the blankets over her, and Waylon was once again alone in the dark.

He sat motionless for a while, before deciding he couldn’t take it anymore. Any moment that thing could come back. He got up and walked on shaky legs towards the bathroom. When he got there, he turned on the overhead light, which was bright enough to banish anything lurking in the shadows. He leaned on the sink and stared at his own face in the mirrored front of the cabinet and wondered if Lisa was right. He looked like a mess. He was pale, and his bloodshot eyes were glassy like he had a fever. He splashed cold water on his face and then opened the cabinet to find the bottle of sedatives he had left over from an old prescription. He didn’t like to use them because he never felt like he got proper rest with them, but if the alternative was lying awake staring a demon in the face… Of course Lisa was right. He’d had a bad dream, like he’d had many times before, and he’d woken up thinking it was real. It was probably just the stress of moving, of trying to repair his marriage and support Lisa in her new job, on top of keeping up with his own work. No wonder it was getting to him. He took two of the tablets and washed them down with a handful of water, and then stood for a while taking deep breaths until his heartbeat slowed and he felt like himself again. In the bright light of the bathroom, he was almost able to laugh at himself. How ridiculous he was being, mistaking a nightmare for real life. Ghosts and demons weren’t real, it was just his mind playing tricks. Just like it always had. Shaking his head, he smiled and shut the cabinet door.

Wide blue eyes stared back at him in the mirror. A man stood just behind him and grinned. His pale face was livid with scars and splotched with blood. His smile showed white teeth.

Waylon recognised that smile from the basement.

From his nightmare.

When the ghoul’s eyes locked on Waylon’s his eerie smile only grew, and in a breathy tone of utter joy, he cried, “ _Darling!_ ”

Waylon screamed and spun around, knocking against the sink and causing bottles and toothbrushes to fall with a clatter.

There was nobody there.


	2. In the Night, In the Dark

Lisa got picked up early the next morning, and it was all Waylon could do to hold it together until Aiden and Mikey had eaten breakfast and been delivered to school. After the school gates closed, Waylon sat in the car at the roadside and debated whether he wanted to go home. He had a project he was already behind on, and he really needed to keep that client.

He opened his phone and pulled up the contact page for his old doctor back in California. He stared at it a while, and then scrolled through his contacts until he reached another name. Before he had time for second thoughts, he pressed the call button.

It rang three times, and then a gruff voice said, “Hello?”

“Miles, it’s me.”

“Yeah, I know it’s fucking you, it says on the caller ID. That doesn’t explain why you’re calling me so damn early.”

Waylon glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “It’s almost nine,” he said.

“Exactly.”

Waylon heard some moving around, and then the click and hiss of Miles lighting a cigarette. “Did I wake you?”

“It’s fine,” said Miles, before taking a deep inhale and letting it out. Waylon could picture the smoke swirling around Miles’s head. “What can I do you for?”

“I wanted to ask you for a favour. You know Lisa and I just moved, right?”

“Yeah. Nice of you to invite me to the housewarming.”

“We didn’t have a housewarming. Lisa said she didn’t have time.”

“Surprise of the century,” Miles muttered. “How is the Ice Queen?”

“Don’t call her that. Anyway, I wondered if you could look into the place we moved into.”

“You didn’t check it out before you bought it?”

“We were in a hurry,” Waylon explained. “I trusted the agent.”

“Shit, Park, you could’ve signed a contract for a tumble-down pile of junk packed to the rafters with asbestos. I thought you were supposed to be smart?”

“It’s not really the house itself. It needs a little work but it’s sound. It’s more something the neighbour said. He said he was surprised anyone bought the house ‘after what happened’.”

“That’s it?”

“Miles, I’ve checked around online but couldn’t find anything. Do you think you could use your awesome reporter skills to do little digging for me?”

“What’s in it for me?” said Miles after another pull on his cigarette.

“I’ve been your friend for twenty years, isn’t that enough?”

There was a long pause, and then Miles said, “All right. I’ll see what I can do. But you’ll owe me.”

“Sure, sure, whatever you want. Thanks Miles.”

Back at the house, Waylon stood for a while inside the front door and listened. All was silent. He approached the basement door and checked it was still locked. “That’s right,” he said aloud. “Stay down there and leave me the hell alone. Don’t make me call a priest on your ass.”

Feeling foolish, he made himself coffee and set himself up in his office for the workday. He managed a good couple of hours of work and was right in the flow of things when his screen went black. It came back on a second later but continued to flicker. Waylon swore and rebooted, but the problem persisted. The display glitched, warped, and then finally reset. Waylon’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, but just as he was about to resume his work a command prompt window opened and white text appeared. At first it was simply gibberish. Waylon tried to find a pattern in it but couldn’t. When at last real words started to appear, Waylon shoved his chair back from the desk so hard it almost fell over. On the screen, after the lines of gibberish, shone the word:

**_darling_ **

Waylon blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. It didn’t disappear, like the dreams and visions. Was he being hacked? It was the most likely explanation, and he knew how to deal with it, but that didn’t explain why he felt as though someone had just poured a bucket of ice water all over him.

“Who,” he whispered, his throat dry and croaky. He moistened his lips and tried again: “Who is this?”

The cursor blinked for a while, long enough for Waylon to wonder if there would be nothing else, but then letters slowly began appearing on the screen, spelling out a message, and Waylon’s blood ran cold:

**_why did you run from me?_ **

Waylon jumped to his feet and turned off the tower. He grabbed his laptop and left and spent the rest of his day working in a cafe in town, until it was time to get the boys from school.

Around six, he received a text from Lisa to tell him she would be working late. Her message was terse, and he guessed she was still annoyed at him for disrupting her sleep the night before. Well, he could deal with that later. He ordered take-out for himself and the kids and indulged in a video-games marathon with both of them after helping them with their homework. By the time they’d brushed their teeth and Waylon had tucked them into bed, Lisa still wasn’t home. Waylon shot her a quick text and received a brusque reply. Something had gone wrong and she needed to stay to fix it. Don’t wait up, she told him, it would probably be a long one. Waylon sighed; it wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. Waylon had just hoped it would be a less frequent occurrence after their supposed fresh start. Waylon was putting in the effort to make this work. Why did it feel like Lisa wasn’t?

He instantly felt bad for thinking it. Lisa worked hard. Waylon worked too, of course, but Lisa earned more, and she had to put up with sexist, asshole bosses on top. It was Waylon’s job to be supportive and understanding. So why did he feel so put out?

He watched TV until the early hours, but he wasn’t really watching it. Junk reality shows were interspersed with the same local news bits over and over: early snows expected in the mountains, a hit-and-run driver apprehended, the search for a missing Leadville man goes on. When Waylon’s eyes refused to stay open, he shut off the TV and went upstairs. He sent Lisa another text asking how much longer she’d be, wondered if he should call, but she hated being interrupted at work. He was still debating as he undressed and slipped under the covers, and in the end, he fell asleep with the phone still in his hand.

Sometime in the middle of the night he half woke to the bed creaking and dipping, and he smiled with relief to know that Lisa was home. She didn’t try to wake him, only pressed a kiss to his cheekbone and snuggled up behind him. Waylon made a small sound of pleasure and relaxed into her embrace. She wasn’t normally this affectionate unless they’d just had sex. Waylon felt cherished and content as she spooned against his back, one strong arm wrapped around his middle to hold him snugly against her body. Waylon rested his hand over hers and drifted back into deeper sleep, all the anxieties of his lonely evening allayed.

The next morning, he woke to his phone buzzing and a text from Lisa. She told him she was sorry she didn’t make it home last night, but she was so late finishing at the office that she stopped the night at a hotel rather than make the trip home. She would see him that evening, she said.

Waylon blinked at the message for a while as his newly awake brain struggled to make sense of it. Then he broke into a cold sweat.

* * *

Waylon didn’t tell Lisa about that night. She would only say he was dreaming, and if he heard her explain it he would start to believe her, but… He couldn’t say why, but he didn’t want to accept her rational explanations. He didn’t _want_ to doubt his own senses, because if he was imagining things then that meant he was losing his mind again. It meant he might get locked up again. It was some illogical doublethink, but he would rather believe his house was haunted than accept he was mentally ill…

Lisa never mentioned sensing anything amiss when she was at home. The worst was that she was grouchy and short-tempered, but honestly that wasn’t that much of a difference from normal. She continued to work long hours, and when she got home, she was exhausted and crabby. Waylon was disappointed to find that many of their old habits were creeping back—Lisa’s patience got thinner and thinner, while Waylon tried too hard to appease her moods and became frustrated when nothing was good enough. These were patterns they’d fallen into before, before things had almost fallen apart and they had decided to start anew when they moved. Waylon was beginning to see that his hopes on that front may have been naive. They were in a new environment, yes, but they were still fundamentally the same people, and it was silly to think they could change overnight.

Waylon’s nightmares persisted, and he had three more episodes of sleep paralysis—that is, he woke to find himself once again face-to-face with the malevolent shadow entity, and it terrified him just as much each time as it had the first night. He drank more coffee and tried to avoid sleeping unless absolutely necessary, leading to many a night spent slumped over his desk and waking with a blinding pain in his neck the next morning.

One such morning found him sitting up with a yawn and stretching the kinks out of his back. At some point in the night, Lisa had draped a blanket over his shoulders. The little kind gesture made Waylon smile. He knew she was under a lot of stress and had trouble communicating how she felt, but small acts like this reassured Waylon that she loved him.

It was a quiet, misty morning, and as he made his bleary way to the bathroom, he heard the boys playing in their room and smiled. It wasn’t yet six, but they were early risers. He peeked into the master bedroom and saw that Lisa was still sound asleep.

Waylon let her sleep and went to take a shower. He undressed as the water heated up and dared a look in the mirror. No one looked back at him save for his own reflection. He looked worse-for-wear, pale and tired. He groaned, quickly brushed his teeth, and then stepped into the tub and under the spray. The hot water was a balm for his aching muscles, and he spent several minutes simply standing with the water beating down on the back of his neck and luxuriating in the warmth. He turned round, closed his eyes, and tilted his face up so the water could kiss his face, and then sighed as tension started to leave his body. He washed his hair and face, and then took a generous dollop of shower gel and worked up a lather between his hands and began to work it all over his body. He favoured more typically “feminine” scents, and so as the room filled with steam Waylon was enveloped in the sweet scent of geranium and orange. As his hands slid over his wet skin he imagined he could feel a second set of hands stroking after them, caressing his body, gently massaging his aching back and shoulders. He sank deeper into the fantasy, wishing Lisa were with him. It had been weeks since they’d been intimate, and Waylon was lonely. He tilted his head and fancied the hot water sliding deliciously over the column of his throat was a line of slow kisses. His hands moved lower, and it was no surprise when he found himself half hard. He paused guiltily for just a moment before he took himself in hand. There was no shame in this, and so long as he was quiet nobody would know. He wanted his wife, but he wouldn’t wake her from her much needed rest. But later, perhaps… It was the weekend. After the boys went to bed, they would have the evening to themselves…

He stroked his cock, the water and soap making his flesh slippery to the touch. He imagined a hand in his sudsy hair and leaned into the touch. With his eyes closed and his body wreathed in steam, he was lost in his sensual fantasy; at first his imagined lover was his wife, but as he grew to full hardness and started to work himself in earnest, he found himself yearning for something more. Waylon was an attentive lover and always took care to make sure Lisa was satisfied, and she was generally content to let him take the lead, but sometimes Waylon wanted to be the one taken care of, held… worshipped. His cheeks flamed at the thought alone, but he stroked himself faster until he was panting for breath. He leaned his forearm against the tiled wall, and then his brow as well. He arched his back instinctively and felt the warm water cascade down his lower back, his buttocks, his thighs. Feeling wicked, he slid his feet apart and imagined how he must look, imagined being watched… His breath caught in his throat and moments later he was coming into his hand and onto the tiles. The water washed the evidence of his pleasure away down the drain, and Waylon was left panting and shaky as the spray started to turn cold.

He turned the shower off sharply. Lisa would give him hell for using up all the hot water. Even so, he couldn’t feel regret. He felt lighter and more relaxed, if slightly embarrassed. But of course, there wasn’t _really_ anybody watching; no one had seen this private moment, so it didn’t matter what fantasy had got him there.

He laughed at himself as he reached for a towel and briskly rubbed the excess moisture from his hair. He wrapped the towel around his hips as he stepped out of the tub. The bathroom was full of steam, and he took a moment to open the window. When he turned to the mirror, intending to comb his wet hair into some semblance of order, he stopped short.

The mirror was completely steamed up but written in the fog was a single word: _beautiful_.

Waylon swiped his hand over the glass to erase the writing, as if by taking it away he could make it so it was never there. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hands over them, breathing hard. He felt cold. All the warmth from the shower and steam had leeched away in a moment, and now he began to shiver. He forced himself to take a deeper breath, and then he opened his eyes.

On some level, he had known what he would see. Even in the light of the morning, the sight chilled him to the bone. The man stood behind him and slightly to the side, so both their faces were reflected in the glass. He was a head taller than Waylon, and pale, like he hadn’t seen the sun in years. In daylight, the bruises and scars on his face stood out even more starkly, but somehow the sight of them evoked just as much pity as fear. They looked painful. In daylight, he looked less like a monster and more like… a person.

“You’re not really here, are you?” Waylon whispered. He met the man’s eyes in the mirror, blue irises bright against blood red sclera. His terrifying grin was gone, and in its place was an expression Waylon couldn’t quite place. In fact, he looked almost… sad?

“Darling,” he breathed, and the sound of his voice was like a cold caress down Waylon’s back.

“I’m not,” Waylon began, and wondered at how he could stand there holding a conversation with a _ghost_. “I’m not your darling. I’m sorry, I don’t know who… You’re an hallucination. You must be. I’m going mad.”

“I frightened you,” said the apparition. “I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“No, I—” Waylon stopped, suddenly having to bottle the urge to laugh because he was apologising to a ghost as if terrifying him half to death were some minor social _faux-pas_. “If… If I turn around, will you be gone?”

The ghost didn’t answer, and so Waylon turned, slowly. He let out a little gasp. The man stood before him, looking as real and solid as anyone… but when Waylon looked down it was clear this wasn’t simply an intruder taking him for a ride. The man’s clothes, once smart formalwear, were ragged and soaked in blood. His bloody shirt was ripped, revealing a gaping wound in his abdomen through which spilled the glistening, writhing coils of his intestines. Waylon’s head spun and he felt like he was going to either faint or be sick, but he pressed his fingernails into his palms and kept it together.

“You don’t have to run away from me,” the man said softly. “I only want to love you.”

“Love me?” Waylon shook his head. “This is all… this is all too weird. I’ve got to be dreaming.”

“Here,” said the stranger. “Take my hand. I know you’re lonely like I am. Don’t you want someone to take care of you?”

Waylon’s breath caught in his throat. The man’s hand was large and clad in a black fingerless glove and marred with blood. Waylon should have been disgusted, should have recoiled, but he found himself reaching out. There was a lump in his throat like he was biting back tears; his heart thumped with longing and dread at the same time. His fingertips were a hair’s breadth away from the stranger’s when a pounding on the bathroom door shattered the moment. He snatched his hand back and whipped his head around. “Waylon, are you going to be much longer?” Lisa called through the door.

“Uh, just a second,” Waylon replied.

“Never mind, I’ll just go downstairs,” Lisa muttered, and Waylon heard her sigh and walk away. When Waylon turned back, he was once again alone in the room. It was only then that it truly hit him: not only had he just had a conversation with a _ghost_ , but that ghost had probably seen him in the shower… what he’d done in the shower… His cheeks flamed and he covered his eyes, absolutely mortified.

“Don’t be embarrassed, darling,” came a whisper at his ear. “I enjoyed it almost as much as you.”

* * *

It was with a sense of unreality that Waylon got dressed and combed his chronically messy hair before venturing out into the house. He had nothing to prove the last hour or so had even happened. It felt like a dream, the kind of dream that lingers in your mind even after you wake up. It felt vitally important to immerse himself in normality, which is why he knocked on the boys’ bedroom door as he was passing and poked his head inside. “Hey guys, who wants breakfast?” he said, and both Michael and Aiden looked up from their game with matching eager expressions in their brown eyes. Both boys had inherited their mother’s dark hair and olive complexion, though Waylon saw himself in the angles of their faces, the shape of their noses. They were the spit of each other, and when they were smaller, they used to delight in confusing parents and teachers alike by pretending to be each other. Aiden had been born two minutes before Michael, and took his role as older brother very seriously, especially when it gave him an excuse to boss his brother around.

“I’m gonna make pancakes,” Waylon said, to whoops of joy. He stepped into the room just in time for Michael to barrel into his legs. He ruffled the boy’s hair and peered around at the toys and clothes scattered around the room like snowdrifts. “This place looks like a bomb’s hit it,” he said. “Don’t let your mother see it like this or she’ll ground you for a week.”

“It wasn’t us,” said Michael, and Aiden shushed him and gave him a shove.

Raising his eyebrows, Waylon said, “No? Well who was it if it wasn’t either of you?”

“It was Billy,” said Michael, at the same moment Aiden said, “We can’t tell!”

“Billy? Who’s that?” said Waylon. The boys looked at each other. Michael looked guilty while Aiden looked annoyed. “Is Billy a secret?” Crouching down, he said softly, “You can tell me.”

The boys exchanged another look, and then Aiden sighed and said, “Billy is our friend who plays with us sometimes.”

“Is he a friend from school?”

“No, he lives here.”

“He doesn’t come out much,” Michael explained. “He gets scared, so he hides.”

“What is he scared of?” Waylon asked.

“Grownups,” Michael said with a shrug. “And Timmy says-”

“Wait, who’s Timmy? I thought you said your friend was called Billy?”

“Timmy lives in the attic,” said Aiden, in the tone of one who’s frustrated at having to explain such simple things.

“A-all right,” said Waylon, struggling to keep up. “What does Timmy say?”

“He says we have to be careful; he says the man downstairs will take us and hurt us if we let him.”

Waylon felt disconnected from his body suddenly. Inexplicably, tears began to prick at his eyes. “That’s enough,” he heard himself say. “You shouldn’t make up stories.”

“We didn’t!” cried Michael.

“It’s _real_ ,” added Aiden. “They play with us and, and sometimes Billy gets upset and throws things around but it’s not his _fault_ —”

“I said that’s _enough_. I don’t want to hear another word about this, do you understand? You’re too old for imaginary friends.”

“But they’re not imaginary—”

“And don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, especially not your mother,” Waylon said sharply. He realised, distantly, that he was shaking. “Now go wash up ready for breakfast. And when you’re done, you’re cleaning this room!”

“But _Daaaad_ —”

“But nothing. Come on.” He clapped his hands for emphasis, and the boys groaned and reluctantly filed out. Waylon stood in the middle of the room for a minute while his head spun. Not one presence in the house but three? Maybe even four if he counted the demonic shadow man who visited him in the night. Could this “man downstairs” be the same as the malevolent shadow that had been tormenting Waylon at night? He’d seen horror movies where a demon disguised itself as a harmless spirit in order to gain sympathy, to be allowed in… What if this demon had taken the form of a handsome man to play on Waylon’s weaknesses? But no, it didn’t make any sense. If it wanted to appear sympathetic, a child would have been a better choice of disguise. Waylon was a parent; he would have found it impossible to ignore a child in distress.

All the more reason for the news of Michael and Aiden’s new friends to fill Waylon with creeping dread.

He half-heartedly picked up some of the boys’ things and set them right, when his attention was caught by a pile of papers sticking out from under the bed. Waylon picked them up and leafed through them. They were Michael’s drawings. At ten, Mikey was already quite the accomplished little artist. He paused at a large drawing of a house—this house, he assumed—populated by figures lovingly drawn in coloured pencil. Michael and his brother were front and centre, with matching dark hair and red smiles. A third, slightly taller figure stood next to them, the trio apparently playing together. Was this the elusive Billy? He had blue eyes and extremely short dark hair and was dressed in what looked like grey overalls. Waylon spotted his own shock of blond hair off to the side, his face unhealthily close to a laptop screen, while Lisa had a cross expression and was pointing at him as though berating him for something. But his eyes were drawn unwaveringly to the other, stranger figures on the paper. At the top, under the pointed roof, crouched several similar-looking creatures with round black eyes and bald heads—presumably one of these gargoyles was “Timmy”? —while down at the bottom…

“Fuck,” Waylon whispered. A pale man in a bow tie, with a distinctive stripe of black hair and red splotches all over his face and body, red lines looping from his stomach to represent his spilled guts. Waylon’s bathroom visitor. The man downstairs. “Well,” Waylon said to himself with a slightly hysterical laugh. “The good news is I’m not going mad. The bad news is this house is haunted as shit.”

He set the picture aside, and the one underneath it was even worse. Waylon recoiled instinctively and the crinkled paper floated to the floor, landing face-up. Waylon stared down at it, once again finding himself face to face with the eyeless gaze of the shadow man. Michael had drawn it as a spindly figure with a black skull for a head and had coloured in the eyes so hard with black crayon he had ripped the paper.

That cemented it: Waylon wasn’t hallucinating, he wasn’t dreaming. Unless he and his children were sharing a delusion, this was _real_. This was really happening. And that meant his family wasn’t safe.

He met Lisa in the kitchen and pulled her aside. “Lis, I need to talk to you.”

“Not now, Waylon,” she sighed, taking a bite out of a protein bar. The boys were still getting washed and dressed. It was still early, even though to Waylon the morning already felt a hundred years long. Lisa checked her watch. “Jer’s coming to pick me up in ten and I have three meetings back-to-back this morning.”

“This is important—”

“My career is important, Waylon,” Lisa said. “We agreed when we got married that I wouldn’t compromise my work. I wouldn’t become some little housewife. It’s me who puts food on the table, Waylon, so this had better not be another complaint about me spending too much time at the office.”

“It’s not,” Waylon said, failing to conceal the hurt in his voice. “It’s about the house. I started seeing things again and at first I thought—”

“Oh, god, not more of this again.” Lisa rolled her eyes. “I really cannot deal with this today, okay?”

“But what if I said the kids have seen them too?”

“Then I’d say you’re frightening them and putting stupid ideas in their heads,” Lisa countered. “I need to go now; can this conversation wait until I get home?”

“I guess…”

“Good. Be a sweetheart and take the kids to school, won’t you? Don’t be late.” She tossed her protein bar wrapper in the trash, picked up her briefcase, and headed for the front door. Outside, a flashy black sedan pulled up to the kerb and a dark-haired man in sunglasses leaned out of the rolled-down window.

“Don’t forget we’ve got parent-teacher conferences on Thursday,” Waylon told Lisa as she was on her way out the door, already waving to greet the man in the car. The infamous “Jer”, or Jeremy, Lisa’s boss and mentor.

“Yes, yes,” she said airily, not even bothering to look over her shoulder. “Just text me the time and I’ll try to make it.”

“All right. See you later…” He waited for her to say goodbye, but she was already getting into the passenger seat. “Jer” flashed Waylon a sleazy smile and rolled the mirrored window back up, and then the car pulled away and they were gone.

Waylon stared after the car for a moment, and then kicked at the long grass and uttered a brief, but very emphatic, “ _Fuck!_ ”

“Dad?” Turning, Waylon saw Michael and Aiden peeking out of the front doorway. “Are you still gonna make us pancakes?”

Waylon checked his watch. They still had thirty minutes before they had to leave. “All right, I can whip up a quick batch but you’ve gotta be ready to go right after,” he said. He put his irritation at Lisa and Jeremy aside, along with his fizzling anxiety over the supernatural situation in the house and focused on getting his kids a good breakfast. He often found there was no better cure for inner turmoil than mundane and practical tasks.

As he walked back into the house, Michael asked him, “Can I have… _extra_ syrup?”

“Hmm? Sure,” Waylon said, as he struggled to pull his thoughts back to the present reality. “Sure, whatever you want.”


	3. A Pearl, Brilliant and Shining

The wind stirred up the dry leaves on the ground and sent them flurrying around Waylon’s feet as he stood on the sidewalk opposite the church. Leadville boasted other, bigger places of worship, but Waylon had spent the day walking around town in an anxious fugue until his feet had brought him here, so he figured this was just as good as any. It was an older building, looked as though it had been there almost as long as there’d been a town, but while the paint on the wooden siding was badly flaked and the grass flanking the front steps was choked with weeds, the church’s spire remained erect and straight, unflinching in the face of adversity and time. Waylon thought he needed some of that, so he shoved his hands into his pockets and crossed the street.

The door creaked when he opened it, but inside the building was dry and smelled faintly of beeswax. As dilapidated as it looked on the outside, on the inside it was certainly cared for. Sunlight filtered in through the windows along the side walls, and the window-ledges boasted little glass vases of fresh cut flowers. The tough grip of anxiety on Waylon’s chest eased a little, and he drew a deep breath for the first time in hours.

By the time he reached the altar, a man in black had appeared from somewhere and greeted him with a mild smile. “Service is finished for the day, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Oh, I, uhm.” Waylon felt himself blushing. He hadn’t set foot in a church since he was a kid and he wasn’t sure of the protocol. “Actually, I was hoping to speak to someone…”

“We are always here for anyone who needs us. Why don’t we sit down?” He gestured to a front pew and he and Waylon sat side by side. Waylon gazed up past the altar to where a large cross hung on the wall, the tortured figure of Jesus suspended upon it. It had always struck Waylon as gruesome, and he averted his eyes now. The priest didn’t push him to speak, and the companionable quiet helped Waylon find his nerve.

“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t know if I’m in the right place at all. But I don’t know where else to turn.”

“The Lord welcomes all who seek his aid.” Waylon gave a wry smile. “I’m Father Martin,” the priest said, and offered his hand. Waylon introduced himself and shook the man’s hand. “Are you a regular church-goer, Mr. Park?”

“No,” Waylon admitted. “I used to go with my family, but since I grew up… I guess I just lost touch with the whole thing.”

“Yet you’re here, now. Will you tell me what brings you here today?”

Waylon clasped his hands and forced himself to look up at the crucifix again. This time he fixed his eyes on Jesus’s face and didn’t look away. “Are you sure? It feels a little disingenuous to only turn up when I need something.”

“Nevertheless…”

“What if I told you… What if I said there was something… there’s something in my house and I think it’s…” He lowered his voice, but even his whisper echoed. “Evil.” Father Martin watched him for a long moment, and then took a deep breath. Waylon pre-empted the scorn he thought was coming and blurted, “I promise you this isn’t a joke. I’m not making stuff up, but I just don’t know where else to go with this and no one will believe me, and my wife already thinks I’m making stuff up—”

Father Martin put a hand on Waylon’s shoulder and Waylon shut up. “Why don’t we speak in private?” he suggested. “Come, my office is just over there.”

In Father Martin’s private office, a small room lit by natural sunlight and comfortably cluttered. The chair he had Waylon sit in was battered leather, the seat moulded by years of use, and there was a pot of white cyclamen in flower on his desk. It all felt very real and mundane, a million miles away from the strange world Waylon had been living in the last few weeks filled with ghosts and demons and self-doubt. Martin perched on the edge of the desk, informal, his hands clasped in his lap and a slight frown on his face. It was the perceived safety of the little room and the middle-aged priest’s patient attention that loosened Waylon’s tongue at last and let him spill the whole thing. He told Martin everything, from moving into the house to encountering the dark entity that filled his nights with terror. He told him about Timmy in the attic, Billy his children’s invisible playmate, but when he got to the man downstairs he found himself skirting around the truth. How could he explain to a man of the cloth what had happened that morning in the shower? That he believed a ghost had watched him pleasure himself, had perhaps even _helped_ … His cheeks coloured and he steered the tale back to the demon.

“Do you feel threatened by these presences?” Martin asked after Waylon had spilled all his guts.

Waylon hesitated before answering, and he surprised himself when he said, “Not the ghosts. Or whatever they are. I was scared by the man in the basement, but he hasn’t done anything to hurt me. He just looks scary.” He made a gesture that could have indicated innards spilling out of his belly. “But the other one… Technically it hasn’t hurt anyone either, but… I wonder if it can’t. Or it can’t yet.”

Martin was nodding. “How are your family faring in this environment?”

“The kids seem fine. Lisa, my wife… it’s hard to tell. Things were good for a little while but over time she’s become more stressed, distant, her patience is shorter. I can’t remember the last time we had a conversation that wasn’t some kind of confrontation.” He sighed and put his head in his hands. “Maybe I should be speaking to a counsellor, not a priest.”

“No,” Martin said thoughtfully. “I think you’ve come to the right place. Sometimes, a demon—and I will call it that, until we are sure otherwise—will feed on negative energy in the home. Your problems with your wife may have been a weak point to begin with, and this creature will exploit that.”

“How do you know so much about this?”

“This town doesn’t have the most peaceful history,” Martin said with a sigh. He walked around the desk and sank into his chair. “Where did you say you lived?” Waylon described his address, and a shadow passed over Martin’s face. “Ah, Mr. Park,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve walked into a sad story that is many generations old already. My advice to you would be to leave that house as soon as possible and try to forget everything that happened.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to be superstitious,” Waylon said with a nervous laugh. “You make it sound like the place is cursed.”

“It may as well be. Tell me, how much do you know of the place’s history?”

“Not much,” Waylon admitted. “The realtor wasn’t very forthcoming, and there isn’t much online.”

“For good reason,” said Martin. “A house gets a reputation for being haunted, it attracts people. It becomes a tourist spot. But there are some places that are better left alone and forgotten before anyone else can get hurt. The only thing that surprises me is that it was sold at all…”

“I had wondered why I got such a great deal,” Waylon said and ran his hand through his hair. “But I can’t just move out. Lisa has her work; the kids go to the local school. I can’t uproot them again so soon. There must be something you can do, or someone… I don’t know, an exorcism or something?”

“I could perform a blessing, perhaps,” Martin said. “I am not authorised to perform exorcisms. It requires special training, and a certain strength of mind, and unshakable faith… and besides, that is more for incidences of possession”

“Listen,” Waylon said, more firmly now. “This thing, whatever it is, is evil. I can _feel_ it. Just because it hasn’t hurt anyone yet doesn’t mean it won’t; it shows up more and more, and even when I can’t see it I can feel its presence. It’s cold, mean… It feels like— like despair. What if it’s getting stronger? You said it was _feeding_ off us. What happens when it gets strong enough to really do something?”

“Now, now, Mr. Park,” Martin said. “Please calm down.”

“Would you be calm if you had something like this lurking around your house? My kids are ten years old. Please, if you could just come round and just… I don’t know. Please.”

Martin gave a deep sigh, and said, “It certainly does sound as though this entity has attached itself to you. It would be…remiss of me to ignore such a serious matter. I must stress that I cannot promise anything.”

“Of course.”

“Very well. When would be a good time?”

* * *

Waylon spent the afternoon trying to work, but his attention was frayed, and progress was slow. He sipped his coffee, the fifth cup of the day, and barely startled when the orderly lines of code on his screen scrambled before his eyes. He blinked several times, rubbed his eyes, and when he looked again there was a message: **_darling_**. The same as before. Waylon sighed and said aloud, “This isn’t really the time. And please put my code back.”

There was a long pause, and then the text erased itself and lines of characters tentatively reappeared. Waylon suppressed a groan and said, “No, look, you forgot the bracket, no that’s not right— Just let me do it.” His fingers flew over the keys as he quickly retyped the section of code his ghostly visitor had deleted. Afterwards, there was a silence which Waylon interpreted as apologetic.

“No, it’s all right,” Waylon found himself saying. He pushed his hair back from his face and glanced out the window. It was a sunny October day and the backyard was still lush, even if the flowers were starting to die off and the shrubs were out of control. Out there, a normal world went on, while inside Waylon talked to a ghost. “I’m just kind of stressed,” he added lamely.

He stared at the screen for a while, until he thought no reply would be forthcoming, until at last the cursor began to move. This time he didn’t change any of the code Waylon had written, only added his message underneath: **_darling, what’s wrong?_**

Waylon laughed. He couldn’t help it. “You know I don’t remember the last time someone asked me that and really wanted to know?” he said. “You’re gonna regret asking.” There was a subtle shift in the air, and Waylon felt a chill as though someone had placed an icy hand on his back. “I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams,” Waylon muttered. “For all I know you’re just a delusion, but for some reason it feels easier to talk to you than to anyone else. Maybe _because_ you might not be real… Why can’t I see you? You let me see you before…”

**_I didn’t want to frighten you._ **

“I’m not frightened,” Waylon said, and then stopped himself. He _was_ frightened—he was terrified, and stressed, and worried. But he also didn’t want to be alone. He closed his eyes and whispered, “Will you show me?”

The temperature in the room dropped another few degrees, enough to make Waylon’s teeth chatter, and then that soft, seductive voice said, “Open your eyes, darling.”

The man was kneeling by Waylon’s swivel chair, looking up at him with concern in his brilliantly blue eyes. Seeing him in natural light, in the middle of the day, was a shock. He looked different now: his eyes were clearer, the scars on his face less livid. His clothes looked almost new, and the gruesome wound in his abdomen was gone altogether. He looked solid and real and _alive_ , and Waylon lost his breath for a moment because under all the blood and welts he was handsome, in a stark sort of way. In a whisper, he asked, “Why do you call me ‘darling’?”

“Because you are,” the man said. “You are beautiful, and precious, and darling. A pearl, brilliant and shining.”

“How can you… You don’t even know me?”

“Don’t you believe in love at first sight?” At Waylon’s blush, he gave a rueful smile that made his eyes dance and said, “The moment you entered this house I knew you were the one. You must forgive me for my earlier behaviour. I was so eager to know you, but I am… out of practice at making myself seen. I’ve spent so long rattling around this old place I quite forgot my manners.” He rose up on his knees and placed his hands on the arms of Waylon’s chair, caging him in. “I know you’re lonely like I am.”

“I’m not lonely,” Waylon insisted. “I’m married, and I have the kids. I have friends.”

“Where are they all now? You’re alone. None of them see the real you like I do. There’s something special about you… This house can see into your mind. All the things you’ve done. Oh, they’re a sin, darling…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t— I haven’t—”

“Shh. You can’t hide from me. Do you understand? You don’t need to pretend with me, or hide yourself. I want to know you… _all_ of you.”

The ghost’s words pierced something deep inside of Waylon, some barrier built up over years of being not quite good enough for anyone, of knowing he was never more than adequate; all Lisa’s little jibes and dismissals, the judgemental looks of the teachers when the boys’ grades never rose above a C, the oblique ways his parents expressed their disappointment at Waylon’s average, unremarkable life after doing so well at Berkeley. They didn’t know how much he had struggled at college, how the isolation had almost killed him and the only thing that kept him going was pouring everything into his coursework, pinning his worth on his grades. His teenage breakdown had shredded his confidence and he had spent all the years after striving to make up for it.

“I don’t even know your name,” Waylon whispered.

“Eddie,” the ghost said, and it was so unexpected that Waylon laughed. “There we are,” Eddie murmured, reaching for Waylon’s face. “There’s that beautiful smile.” His thick fingers stroked Waylon’s cheek, so cold but so gentle. Waylon leaned into the touch without thinking. “I see how hard you work, my darling. I’ve been watching you. Keeping this big old house in order, taking care of those adorable children, and without a word of thanks.” He leaned closer, and Waylon couldn’t look away from his lips. They looked soft, even with the scar that pulled the upper lip up and slightly to the side giving him a permanently wry look. He wanted to trace that scar with his tongue. “You’re so good, my love,” Eddie whispered. “The perfect little wife…”

They were close enough for Waylon to feel a chill upon his lips when the sound of a key in the front door lock brought him crashing back into reality. He jolted back with a gasp, and Eddie growled, “Who’s that?”

“It… It must be Lisa, but she’s home early,” Waylon fumbled. The angry look on Eddie’s face startled him. Waylon sprang to his feet and Eddie disappeared. Waylon met Lisa hanging up her coat in the hallway. “Hey,” he said. “What’re you doing home?”

“That’s a nice welcome,” Lisa said dryly. She kicked off her shoes and left her briefcase by the door. “I’ve accrued some time off and I thought I’d surprise you.”

“You did?” Waylon felt bad for thinking that didn’t sound like Lisa at all.

“And I booked us a reservation at a nice little place in town for dinner later.”

“I can’t,” Waylon said at once. “I… Who’s going to watch the kids?”

“I’ll call a sitter. Or the neighbour—”

“The closest neighbour is a weird old man I’ve met _once_ ; I am not leaving the boys with a stranger.”

“Come on, Way.” Lisa stepped closer to him and held his face in her hands. Behind her, the front door slammed shut. “I thought you’d be happy since I’ve been working so much.”

“I am,” Waylon said. “It’s just unexpected. What’s the occasion?”

“What, I can’t spoil my husband now and then? Do I need to have a reason?”

“No, of course not,” Waylon stammered. “Are you sure they can spare you at the office?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Waylon said, and put his hands on Lisa’s waist and gave her a soothing peck on the cheek. Suddenly her head jerked back, and she yelped. “What is it?” Waylon said.

Putting a hand to the back of her head, Lisa looked around with wide eyes. “I don’t— It felt like someone grabbed my hair. God, it’s fucking freezing in here…” She was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Who the hell is that?”

“I’ll get it,” Waylon said, and ducked past her. He opened the door to Father Martin, whose beat-up old Ford was parked behind Waylon’s car in the front drive. “Father, come in.”

“I apologise for being a little late.”

“Not at all, come on in. This is my wife, Lisa. Lisa, this is Father Martin Archimbaud.”

“Hello,” Lisa said, shaking the man’s hand and shooting Waylon a strange look. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I asked Father Martin to come here,” Waylon explained. “It’s about the, uh—”

“Oh, no. Waylon, don’t tell me it’s about your ghosts?”

“What Mr. Park has described to me is a very serious situation if you’ll pardon me saying so. Tell me, how much do you know about this house and its history?” He moved deeper into the hallway and Waylon closed the door behind him. In the reflection in the stained-glass pane in the door, he caught a glimpse of Eddie pulling a contemptuous face.

“Not much,” said Lisa. “But I’m not really a superstitious type. Look, I’m very sorry to have wasted your time, you’ve come all the way out here, but I’m afraid we’re not in need of your services, Father. Can I offer you a drink before you leave?”

“Oh, but my dear, you are. I’m afraid you are very much in need.” He advanced further into the house, gazing about him without seeming to really look. “I can feel it already. A dark presence… Evil dwells in this house.” He made a slow turn in the middle of the entry hall, before saying to Waylon, “I’ll do what I can for you, but this entity is very strong, and I can already feel that it does not like me being here.”

Lisa scoffed, but Waylon said, “Please, anything you can do will help.”

“Waylon,” Lisa said lightly. “Can I have a word with you in private?”

They left Father Martin sprinkling holy water, a vial of which he had produced from the folds of his cassock, around the entry hall and living room. Stepping into the kitchen, Lisa pushed the door to and hissed, “Waylon, what the fuck?”

“I met him earlier today,” Waylon replied, also keeping his voice low.

“This is insane. There is no such thing as ghosts, or demons, and this poor man is wasting his time—”

“What would it take for you to believe me?” Waylon said hotly. Lisa blinked at him, and Waylon was surprised at himself too. “You would know what was going on if you were home for more than a few hours at a time—”

There was the sound of glass smashing, and Waylon and Lisa rushed to the living room where they found Father Martin on his knees. He had dropped his little bottle of holy water and it had shattered. He was staring at nothing and muttering. Waylon approached cautiously, but each step closer to the man increased the sick feeling in his stomach.

Archimbaud rose more quickly than a man his age should be able to move and lunged for Waylon. Lisa screamed, Waylon jerked backwards, and Father Martin grabbed at him. His eyes were wide and dark. “I understand now. I have seen the truth. Revelation is at hand!”

He made another grab for Waylon. His teeth were bared and his eyes looked like those of a panicked animal. Waylon couldn’t have said whether the old man would have truly attacked him; it made no difference; in the end he never got the chance. He halted in the air before he could reach Waylon, his arms outstretched and his face turning red as though someone had him by the throat. Then he flew backwards and his head hit the wall with a sickening _thwack_ before crumpling unconscious to the floor.

Half an hour later, Waylon and Lisa watched poor Father Martin get loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher. He was conscious, but his eyes were faraway, and he was muttering in Latin as they took him away.

Left standing on their front porch, the couple were silent for a while until Lisa said, “Well.”

“Er,” said Waylon.

“I don’t want to hear another word about hauntings, demons, or ghosts,” said Lisa. “This is the last straw.”

“What? But you saw what happened—”

“I saw a fragile man in poor health so worked up about demons he took a turn and ended up in hospital,” Lisa said. “It’s a wonder he didn’t break his skull with that fall.”

“Seriously? You think he _fell_?”

“Obviously. And I don’t want to hear any more supernatural bullshit. Enough is enough.”

“Lis—”

“Dinner is at seven. We are going to have a nice meal out like a regular married couple and first thing tomorrow you are going to call Doctor Snow and tell him everything.”

She turned to go back inside but Waylon stood his ground. “No,” he said.

“What?” Lisa turned. “’No’ to which part?”

“Both. All of it,” said Waylon. He dug his nails into his palms and met Lisa’s dark eyes. Usually he would have backed down by now.

“I can’t get a refund on this reservation, Waylon.”

“Then you should have checked with me before you booked it,” Waylon replied. “If it’s so important I’m sure you can find someone else to go with you. I bet that boss of yours would love to take you out.”

Lisa’s eyes widened and Waylon immediately felt awful. The insinuation was bad enough, but to make it when he had been moments away from kissing a ghostly stranger just hours before was even worse. The apology was on the tip of his tongue when Lisa did something unexpected: she looked away. Lisa was a straightforward and assertive woman, and it wasn’t like her to be unable to meet someone’s eyes, least of all Waylon’s. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, but she had hesitated a moment too long.

“Lisa…”

“At least he makes an effort,” Lisa said, giving Waylon’s scuffed Converse and frayed hoodie a disdainful look.

_You are beautiful, and precious, and darling_ , went Waylon’s memory. _A pearl, brilliant and shining._

“Right…” Waylon stared at the ground for a long moment before turning away. He thought he might cry, or be sick.

“Wait!” Lisa cried after him. “Way, nothing happened.”

“Okay.”

“Where are you going? Aren’t we going to… to talk about this?”

So there was something to talk about. That was… disappointing, but Waylon wasn’t fully able to think about it just then. “You’re right we need to have a conversation,” he said softly. “But not now. Right now I need to go pick up the kids before the school calls to ask why they’re still there. Meanwhile you’ll call the restaurant and change it to a reservation for four, and we’ll have dinner together as a family. We’ll talk about _us_ later.”

“Fine,” Lisa said, uncharacteristically agreeable. Waylon nodded sadly and trudged to the car.

* * *

They didn’t talk about it that night, or the night after that. Lisa, to her credit, made an effort to be home more and spend more time with the boys. Interactions between Lisa and Waylon were strained. They kept up an act in front of the children, but in private Waylon was distant and Lisa was brittle. By this time, it was well into November and the weather had turned grey and chilly. Halloween had come and gone, to Waylon’s relief, without significant incident, but the lack of supernatural activity had him feeling like he was holding his breath, just waiting for the peace to break. He spent more time outdoors fixing the front yard, and the hard physical work worked wonders for his anxiety. He was raking leaves on Saturday morning when he glanced up at the house and noted that a fresh coat of paint wouldn’t go amiss before it got too damp in the winter, when he spotted movement in an upstairs window. Mike and Aiden were playing inside despite Waylon’s best attempts to coax them away from the Xbox. Waylon waved, but the pale face darted away and out of view. Waylon frowned, but thought no more about it until later when he went in for a drink and found both boys glued to the TV in the living room.

“Hey guys,” he began as he sat down on the couch with a hot cup of coffee warming his hands. “How’s the game going?”

“Fine,” Mikey said without breaking his concentration. Waylon watched the screen for a while and was temporarily absorbed in the brightly coloured, cartoony world of the co-op platformer the boys were playing. He sipped his coffee and said, “Say, did one of you guys go upstairs for a bit earlier?”

“What? No, we’ve been here,” said Aiden in a tone that suggested it was a dumb question. They would be teenagers before Waylon knew it.

It confirmed Waylon’s suspicion and he filed it away, before giving Aiden a friendly nudge and saying, “Come on, let your old Dad have a go?”

It was the looming Thanksgiving weekend that finally forced Waylon and Lisa to talk. Perhaps the most devastating thing about that conversation was how _not_ devastated Waylon felt. He was sad and disappointed, confused, and a bit angry—but if he had expected to feel like his world was falling apart he needn’t have worried. That alone told him too much about the situation he and Lisa had gotten themselves in.

“I thought about taking the kids to my family’s place for Thanksgiving,” Lisa said. “Make a long weekend of it.”

“Can you take the time off work?” Waylon asked.

Lowering her eyes, Lisa said, “I’ve banked enough days, and if there’s anything really important I’ll have my cell and my laptop with me.”

“Are you sure _Jer_ can do without you that long?”

“Come on, Waylon. I told you nothing happened.”

“I’m just not sure I can believe you,” said Waylon. “After all, it’s not the first time, is it?”

Lisa looked away. This was the reason they had wanted to make a fresh start in another state, miles away from the troubles that had almost driven them apart. But those troubles had only followed them, because the problem had never been the place.

Waylon understood, to a point. Lisa’s dissatisfaction with him as a husband stemmed from the same issues with which his parents found fault: after being a brilliant child and a gifted student at a prestigious university, Waylon had never quite lived up to his so-called potential. He made steady money as a freelance software engineer and programmer, had developed a wide array of skills to maximise his versatility, but he wasn’t ambitious. No one seemed to understand that his teenage breakdown and subsequent hospitalisation had affected him much more deeply than he usually let on. That period of his life was a dark pit from which he almost didn’t escape, and it left him with lifelong fears and stresses. Lisa called his refusal to push himself out of his comfort zone “avoidant”, but the truth was he hadn’t had a comfort zone since the day he saw his first “ghost”. As a teenager and young adult he had jumped at shadows and lived in a constant state of tension and fear, had believed he was crazy; now he was grown he wanted nothing more than a peaceful life with his family.

So, he did understand why Lisa, who had always been driven, would have wanted more. They’d still been living in San Francisco when she’d had an affair with the brother of a co-worker. It had been an ugly time, and they had almost divorced, when Lisa secured this job at Murkoff and the opportunity to move. A fresh start, it was supposed to be. Lisa had promised everything would be different, and that it would never happen again. And Waylon had been too afraid of being alone to doubt her.

“Maybe nothing physical has happened yet,” said Waylon. “But it will, won’t it?”

“No, of course not—”

“I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to always be wondering and suspicious, worrying you’re falling for someone else or even just _wanting_ to…”

“Way. I love you.”

“I love you too. But I think it’s time we both face up to facts. This isn’t working, is it?” Lisa bit her lip. Her dark eyes glistened with unshed tears and Waylon just wanted to hold her, but he resisted. “I think we both know I’m not quite what you need…”

“You deserve better,” Lisa said softly and hung her head.

Waylon took a deep breath and slumped in his seat. Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t; he thought perhaps that she did. “Why don’t you take the boys for the holiday?” he said. “Take a few days, relax, do some thinking.”

“You won’t come too? The boys’ll be upset.”

“I have work,” Waylon said. “Besides, your sister will be there with her girls. They’ll be too busy playing in that jungle your dad calls a garden to miss me.”

Lisa reached across the table for Waylon’s hand. “Why not come with us? Huh? It’ll be good. Just like old times. We can let Mom watch the kids and spend some quality time together…”

Waylon was tempted, he really was. But he knew what lay down that road. He and Lisa would keep going round and around this same dance again and neither of them would really be happy.

Lisa and the boys left early on the Wednesday evening to catch a late-ish flight up to Oregon where Lisa’s parents lived in a gorgeous old house on a lake. Waylon had visited often enough, but even knowing how beautiful the lake was in the fall and how delicious Lisa’s mom’s food was, it was the last place he wanted to be. He gave each of the boys a tight hug before they piled into the waiting taxi. He and Lisa shared a more reserved embrace and a quick peck on the cheek. “You really won’t change your mind?” she said softly.

“Lis…”

“I know. I’m so sorry, Way. I wish I could do it all over differently.”

“I really do have work,” Waylon said. “We’ll talk when you get back. We need to figure out how we go forward…”

“Yeah…”

“All right, well. Travel safe. Boys, you be good for your mom, okay?”

“Yes, Dad,” the boys said in unison, hanging out the car window.

He watched the cab drive away with an odd feeling; he wondered if he should be more emotional, but strangely he felt light. He felt like he could breathe properly for the first time in weeks. He would miss his boys, and he would miss Lisa… but he had been missing her for years, sometimes even when she was right next to him.


	4. Possession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I'm English and I have no idea how American holidays work, please don't come for me :P

Without Lisa and the boys, the house was quiet and seemed twice its usual size. He felt the onset of grief and sadness yawning before him and made himself busy to ward it off. He started in the kitchen with the dishes, and then moved upstairs. At the door to the boys’ bedroom he paused, but the room was empty and lit in mellow early-evening light. He picked up Mike and Aiden’s toys off the floor and put them in the big chest under the window and hung their discarded clothes in the closet. He made the beds, opened the window to let a little fresh air in, and emptied the trashcan. As he worked, he hummed to himself. He had the feeling of being watched, but he pretended he didn’t see the face peering at him from between the slats in the closet door. When he left the room, he closed the window, and drew the curtains, and switched on the boys’ night light. He worked his way through the whole house. He hadn’t planned to clean, but once he got started, he slipped into a calm, almost meditative state that let the hours slide by in a pleasant blur of simple, honest work. He swept, vacuumed, mopped, dusted and polished, until the interior of the house smelt of beeswax furniture polish and every surface gleamed. It was only when the woods outside were hidden by the full dark of night that Waylon stopped. He was hungry, he realised, and exhausted. His body ached, but he was glad of it because he had been so absorbed, he hadn’t thought about his marriage or missed his children all evening. Now he reheated some leftover lasagne and ate it in front of a Netflix movie, the plot of which he forgot instantly, and treated himself to a single beer. Lisa called before bedtime to let him know they’d arrived safely, and he wished Mike and Aiden goodnight over the phone. When the call ended, Waylon turned off the TV, dumped his dishes in the sink, and then confronted the silence he had been avoiding since his family left. Outside was pitch dark. This far outside the city centre, no light penetrated through the trees but the milky glow of moonlight. When he looked at his face reflected in the kitchen window, he wasn’t surprised to see he wasn’t alone.

“You’ve been quiet,” Waylon said.

In the glass, Eddie tilted his head and smiled. It had an echo of the rictus grin he had worn the first time Waylon saw him, but Waylon wasn’t scared off anymore. “And you’ve been busy,” the ghost said fondly. “Working yourself off your feet, you poor thing.” Waylon stretched a crick in his neck and Eddie murmured, “Let me,” and put his hands on Waylon’s shoulders. Waylon gasped at the cold. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” said Waylon. In the window, he and Eddie looked equally insubstantial, like just a couple of shades, but the ghost’s touch was as firm as any real person’s and his strong hands made short work of easing away the knots in Waylon’s neck and back. Waylon closed his eyes and found himself leaning back against Eddie’s body. For a spirit, he felt remarkably solid.

“You’re exhausted,” Eddie said when Waylon tried to stifle a yawn. “Come to bed.”

“I’m not that tired,” Waylon protested.

“Now, now, darling,” said Eddie. “I know what’s best for you.” His massaging fingers had reached the base of Waylon’s skull and Waylon tilted his head back and moaned. “That’s it, love,” Eddie murmured. His large hand slid around Waylon’s neck to grip his throat. He didn’t squeeze, just held, but Waylon could feel his strength and it sent a hot pulse of desire from his head to his toes, ultimately centring in his groin. He swallowed, partly just to feel how tightly his Adam’s apple pressed against Eddie’s palm. Eddie wrapped his other arm around Waylon’s waist, splayed his hand on Waylon’s abdomen and slid coldly downwards. “Be a good girl for me now, won’t you?”

“I’m not…” Waylon gasped, but his protests were forgotten when Eddie slipped his hand lower, passing through his jeans as though they weren’t there and wrapped around his cock. His hips jerked, but Eddie kept hold of his throat and shushed him, whispered soothing, authoritative instructions in his ear.

“I’ve been watching you so long,” Eddie told him. Waylon almost imagined he could feel his icy breath on the shell of his ear. “Ever since you came here… you’ve captivated me, darling. And you know it.” His touch was hypnotic, Waylon couldn’t think of anything but his hands and the gentle rasp of his voice. “Don’t you, you minx? Parading yourself around looking so pretty, you know exactly what you do to me, you little slut. Well, you got my attention just like you wanted. Now what’re you going to do?”

“I…”

“Going to run away again?”

“N-no…” Maybe he was a hypocrite, but after years of being Lisa’s second choice, wasn’t it time he got to be someone’s first? His marriage was, effectively, over. Oh, they would talk after the weekend, but Waylon had no intention of trying to patch things up a second time. He had put in enough effort, spent a decade trying to be good enough, and he didn’t want to do it anymore. He didn’t want to be acceptable if only he worked harder or took better care of himself or dressed smarter or networked with the right people… He wanted to be adored.

And yes, maybe part of his motivation was spite, but who would really blame him? Didn’t he deserve this, after all this time? Didn’t he deserve to be taken care of?

He turned his head and Eddie released his throat. Face to face, Eddie seemed even bigger than Waylon remembered. He had to tilt his head back to look him in the eye. Tentatively, he placed his hands on Eddie’s thick waist and then slid them upwards. He could feel the slightly rough texture of his shirt, the hard curves of his muscles underneath. “You feel real,” he said wonderingly. Eddie was watching him with a dark look, and when Waylon’s hands reached the broad span of Eddie’s shoulders, he grabbed Waylon’s waist and pushed him back against the kitchen worktop. One thick thigh pressed in between Waylon’s legs and Waylon bucked against it. He fisted Eddie’s collar and yanked him down and into a kiss. The ghost’s lips were soft, but his kiss was hard, cold, and relentless. When Waylon parted his lips Eddie plunged his tongue into his mouth, bending him back against the counter and forcing his jaw open wide, giving Waylon no choice but to surrender. He dominated Waylon so easily it made Waylon’s toes curl. Eddie kissed him like he wanted to possess him, like he already did.

Waylon moaned a complaint when Eddie lifted him into his arms and kept kissing and nuzzling at his jaw and cheek as he carried him up the stairs. He didn’t see the boys’ bedroom door standing ajar, didn’t notice the smoky visage hovering just within. When they passed under the hatch into the attic, he was too busy to notice the creaking footstep above or the scrape of the hatch being moved aside. Eddie carried Waylon into the bedroom and the door closed behind them as though pushed by an unseen hand.

* * *

For the first time in weeks, Waylon slept soundly all the way through the night. He woke on the Thursday morning to the sound of light rain on the window. The room was cold, but he didn’t feel like getting up to turn on the heat. He pulled the comforter up over his shoulder and thought about last night. Had it been a dream? No, not if the satisfying aches in his body meant anything. Under the covers, he ran his hands over his body and found tender spots where Eddie’s harsh grip had left bruises. Waylon had never slept with someone like that before, with that much passion. Eddie’s lovemaking had straddled a line between tender and violent, and Waylon had been utterly swept away in it.

Downstairs in the kitchen, his coffee things were already laid out for him, and he smiled. “Good morning,” he said as he fixed himself a drink.

Behind him, a chair creaked, and then Eddie said, “Did you sleep well, darling?”

“Better than I have in weeks,” Waylon said. He turned to see Eddie sitting at the kitchen table in his shirtsleeves. He looked like a totally different man from the frightful apparition that had first appeared to Waylon in the basement, and that night felt long, long ago. Now Eddie sat there, a handsome man with pale skin and black hair with just a few strands of grey, bright blue eyes and an affectionate, slightly asymmetric smile. His clothing was clean and intact with not a trace of blood anywhere. His face bore some light scarring, but it was paler, as though it was healing. “Can I offer you anything?”

“I can’t eat or drink, darling,” Eddie said. “Although I’m sure anything you make would be delicious. Don’t tell me you’re _only_ going to have coffee? Darling really, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

If it had been Lisa, Waylon would have bristled at the subtle chiding, but Eddie spoke with such obvious affection that Waylon didn’t feel bossed around, only cared for. He struggled to wipe the stupid grin off his face and shook his head. “I’m not usually hungry in the morning.”

“Let me make you something?” Eddie said.

“Can you do that? Cook, I mean. You don’t, I don’t know, phase through stuff?”

“I was solid enough last night,” Eddie said with a quirk of his eyebrow, and Waylon blushed. No, Eddie had proved himself to be _quite_ substantial indeed. Waylon’s insides squirmed as he stepped aside to let the big man reach the stove. Eddie took three eggs out of the decorative wire basket on the counter and set to work. Waylon couldn’t help the bubbly, excited feeling in his stomach as he appreciated the view of Eddie moving around his kitchen as though he owned the place. God, did he actually have _butterflies_? He was thirty-two for Christ’s sake. Eddie sang as he cooked, that same melody that would play on the radio in the basement sometimes, and Waylon found himself humming along.

“What shall we do today?” Eddie asked him a short while later, just as Waylon polished off the last of his omelette.

“I really should work…”

“Nonsense, darling, it’s a holiday. And we have it all to ourselves.”

“Oh shit,” Waylon muttered, causing Eddie to look at him in surprise. “It’s a holiday, you’re right. I should call Lisa—”

“That shrew?”

“She’s my wife,” Waylon said, and almost choked on the words. Whatever Lisa had done, whatever problems they had between them, Waylon had betrayed her last night. The fizzy feeling in his stomach turned to nausea and he held his head in his hands. “What have I done?”

“Waylon.” Eddie pulled Waylon’s hands away from his face. He was kneeling before him, and his expression was serious. “Don’t you dare waste your time feeling guilty. That woman took you for granted for far too long, she failed to see treasure she had in her hand, and that is no one’s fault but her own. Just look at you. It’s only been one night, and you’ve already blossomed. I could see it the moment she left; it was like a weight lifted off your shoulders.

“She’s the mother of my children.”

“Why, because she popped them out of her womb?” Eddie snarled. “She’s never here, you’re the one who’s been raising them, practically all on your own. You’re more of a mother to those boys than she ever could be. Put her out of your mind, darling, she isn’t worth it. You belong to _me_ now.” He emphasised this point by cradling Waylon’s head in one huge hand and pulling him into a biting kiss. Whatever principles Waylon had been about to argue fell away in the face of that kiss; Eddie demanded the attention of all Waylon’s senses, invaded every corner of his mind to make sure he understood and accepted his claim. Eddie’s love was overbearing and unreasonable, and Waylon wanted all of it.

He took him there, bent over the kitchen table with the breakfast things pushed aside and the crockery clattering, as the rain pattered against the window. Last night, Eddie had been gentle. He had made love to Waylon slowly in the soft, dark bedroom and taken Waylon apart piece by agonising piece, and only at the end, when he had been swept up by his own pleasure, had he forgotten to mind his strength and held Waylon too hard. This morning he took no such care. He pinned Waylon to the table and entered him roughly, as though he were simply too desperate with desire for Waylon that he couldn’t stand to spend another moment not inside him. Waylon cried out, sobbed, scratched at the wooden tabletop. Eddie forced his way into his body just as surely as he had invaded his mind and heart. Was this what it felt like to be possessed? If so, Waylon would welcome every bruising caress and burning-cold kiss, because he had never felt so loved.

It rained the rest of the morning, but Waylon didn’t care because he spent the time wrapped up in Eddie’s company. He did make a half-hearted attempt to work, but Eddie kept stealing his attention and Waylon was all too happy to let him. He felt like a schoolboy with his first crush, laughing and blushing as he stole kisses and thrilled at the feel of his lover’s strong arms around his waist. Waylon was six feet tall, but Eddie made him feel small.

He did manage to find the presence of mind to call Lisa to talk to the boys and wish the in-laws a happy Thanksgiving and make his apologies for his absence. Lisa was coolly civil to him, but that was okay. The less they talked, the easier it was to pretend he hadn't spent the night and day fucking someone else. The boys were disappointed he wasn’t there but were easily distracted by their cousins and the general festivities. He would have to make this up to Lisa’s mom somehow, but he didn’t regret his decision to stay. 

He was lounging with Eddie on the couch in the afternoon when his phone buzzed again. He laughed as he wiggled his way out of Eddie’s arms, and Eddie groaned when Waylon eventually freed himself. He was still flushed with laughter when he fished his cell phone from where it had skidded under the coffee table and checked his notifications. He ignored the couple of emails about work—they could wait Monday—but when he saw Miles Upshur’s name he opened that one immediately. He skim-read Upshur’s email, and then scrolled back to the top and read it again. He felt blood drain out of his face and his fingers tingled with cold.

“Is everything all right, darling?” Waylon jumped when he realised Eddie had come up behind him. He could move silently when he chose to, and now he loomed over Waylon with a mildly concerned look on his face. Waylon hid the phone screen against his chest, forced a smile, and said, “Fine! Just a message from a friend.”

“You look distressed.”

“He’s having a personal emergency,” Waylon lied. “I’m just gonna go give him a call—”

Eddie caught Waylon’s elbow—gently—and said, “Can’t it wait? I’m sure whoever he is he’s a big boy, he can take care of his own problems…”

“I’ll only be a minute, Eddie,” Waylon said. Was he imagining the dangerous, oh-so-faint edge to Eddie’s voice? He remembered his face the first couple of times he’d appeared to him, wild eyes and covered in blood, and shivered. He hadn’t thought much of it since—he’d assumed Eddie had suffered a gruesome death it was probably rude to ask about it.

He gave Eddie a light kiss, which Eddie immediately deepened and made it so hard for Waylon to tear himself away. He was at risk of surrendering again, but his phone buzzed against his chest and pulled him back to his senses. He gave Eddie’s lip a teasing bite and said, “Ten minutes, baby, and I’ll make it up to you when I come back.” Eddie’s eyes darkened with unconcealed lust, and Waylon backed away with a smile he didn’t have to force. Eddie put a hand over his heart and mimed the part of a love-stricken suitor.

Waylon was still smiling when he went outside to call Miles. He was sure this was a mistake, there was no way the man he’d spent the night and morning with—the man he was falling for—was what Miles said.

But he still made the call from inside his car, so he would not be overheard.

He dialled Upshur’s number and the line rang several times before Miles picked up. “Park?” he said.

“Thought you had caller-ID,” Waylon snapped, glancing nervously out the window. Eddie stood in the living room window and smiled at him, and Waylon waved and turned away. “Why the hell would you send me something like that and then take ages to answer the damn phone?”

“Whoa, whoa. I’m a busy man, okay? Believe it or not I have other stories to cover, ones that might actually help pay the bills.”

“All right,” said Waylon. “I’m sorry. But this stuff you sent over… It can’t be right.”

“You saying I made it up?!”

“No! No, of course not, but… where did you find this?”

“I have my ways,” said Miles. Evasive bastard never did want to reveal his sources.

Waylon had grabbed his laptop on the way out, and he opened it up on his knees and pulled up Miles’s email. On the screen was a capture of a cached news page dated seven years ago, with a mugshot of a pale man with a stripe of black hair, bright blue eyes, and a smile that made Waylon’s heart skip a beat. The headline read: “The Deadly Groom: suspected killer injured resisting arrest”. He scanned the article again, but his head was swimming and he felt like he was going to faint. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Injured? But what do they mean ‘killer’?”

“I remember this case, actually,” said Miles. “Didn’t put two and two together, since someone clearly wanted the address kept out of the media. Congrats on living in a murder house, Park.”

“This can’t be right.”

“This asshole killed four women before the cops caught up to him,” Miles said. Waylon heard him, but it was as though he were speaking underwater. He thought he might be sick. “Holed himself up in that house until they stormed the place, and I guess it went bad for him because there’s nothing about a trial. I suppose he died of his wounds, the sick fuck. Easy way out if you ask me. I found some photos of the crime scenes but they’re not for the faint of heart. Let me know if you want to see ‘em.”

 _Did_ Waylon want to see them? He wanted proof that Miles was wrong, but… what if he was right?

“I’m not faint of heart,” he said, although it sounded like a lie. 

“And that’s just the most recent case,” said Miles. “I dug even further back, and it’s like that place attracts tragedy. Someone’s put in some work to cover this stuff or at least keep it out of the mainstream news. I guess it’s hard to sell a house with so much blood soaked into the floorboards.”

“I guess,” Waylon said weakly.

“There was a family in the seventies, murder-suicide, and then a kid got killed by his step-dad in the fifties. Shit, Waylon, you could probably claim the place was haunted and make bank charging stupid tourists to scare themselves shitless.”

“Ah, yeah,” Waylon said.

“You okay? I know it’s a lot to take in.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Listen, I’ve…” He looked back at the house again. The front window was empty now. “I’ve got to go.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Bye Miles, thanks for everything.” Waylon hung up and stared out the windscreen at the bronze-leaved trees. It was a sunny afternoon; the woods were pretty and peaceful. Everything looked normal, but Waylon’s world had turned upside down… again.

Perhaps he had gone mad after all.

When he went back inside the house was quiet but for the wind whispering through the open kitchen window. The living room was empty. He looked down at his cell phone and thought about simply deleting Miles’s messages and pretending the last few minutes never happened. Pretend he didn’t have this new knowledge sitting like a weight in his belly.

Clutching his phone like a talisman, he made his way to the basement door. The padlock was off, and the door was ajar, as though in invitation. Waylon opened it and stared at the stairs leading down into darkness, looking for anything like a staircase down into hell. He swallowed and turned on the light. He’d replaced the bulb weeks ago, but the light did little to alleviate Waylon’s sense of dread. The piles of junk crammed from wall to wall created a confusing maze filled with shadows and tight turns. Waylon squeezed his way through the gaps until he reached the clear area at the back where a worktable and antique Singer stood as though their user had merely stepped away for a moment.

“Eddie?” Waylon said, and was frustrated when it came out as a hoarse, timid whisper. “Eddie, where are you?”

No response.

Waylon’s body still ached from their lovemaking, and now Eddie had the nerve to disappear and ignore him? Waylon kicked at the sewing machine and made it rattle. The temperature dropped abruptly, and Waylon smirked in mean satisfaction. “There you are,” he snarled.

“Is something wrong, darling?” Eddie said as he appeared out of the shadows. Down here, in the stark light from the single naked bulb, the sharp planes and angles of his face stood out in dramatic contrast, making his expression hard to read.

“Eddie, how did you die?”

Eddie tilted his head. “What on Earth prompted you to ask that? Why, dearest, you look upset.”

“Tell me the truth!” Waylon held his phone out, almost dropping it from his sweaty fingers, and confronted Eddie with the photograph from the news article. Eddie was younger in it, it must have come from an earlier arrest before the one that cost his life, but it was still unmistakably him staring through the camera with a smile straight out of a fifties sitcom.

“Where did you get this?” Eddie breathed. His face was made of stone. Waylon couldn’t believe this was the same man he’d joked with and fucked that very morning. When Waylon had been so lonely and afraid, Eddie had been there to keep his head above water with his old-fashioned charm and tender affection. Now those crystalline blue eyes were distant and hard.

“My friend,” Waylon said. “It doesn’t matter where I got it, is it true? Are you a…? Are you a killer?”

“I must admit, before I met you, I was a different man,” said Eddie. “If only I’d had the love of a good woman, someone to stand by me, everything might have turned out different.”

“Oh god.” Waylon swayed on his feet.

“Darling, you look faint. Won’t you sit down?” Eddie’s words were tender, but his expression was remote. As Waylon watched, the whites of his eyes turned red and his skin became blotched with scars and injuries. Blood trickled from his eyes and mouth, and yet more appeared on his clothing and hands. The shirt he’d been wearing became ragged, and a large dark red stain started to emerge on his abdomen. He took a step towards Waylon and Waylon backed up, while overhead the light began to flicker. Waylon saw a look of pain cross Eddie’s bloody features, only to be swiftly followed by rage. His face became monstrous in anger, and he snarled, “You want to leave me, is that it? You want to leave me?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Waylon said. “Oh Jesus. And it was you who pushed Father Archimbaud into the wall, wasn’t it? You put the man in the hospital.”

“He was going to hurt you, what would you have me do? Once that demon gets its claws into someone—”

“And it says here you _killed_ people. Women. _Mutilated_ —”

“You ungrateful shit,” Eddie spat. “I try and I try, but you all betray me. Those sluts got what they deserved!” When he lunged, big fist upraised, Waylon ran. He forced his way through the gap in the shelves and sprinted for the stairs with his heart in his mouth. Behind him, he heard Eddie shouting: “Fine! Go! Just like all the other ungrateful sluts!”

Waylon ran up the stairs and through the hallway, yanked open the front door and dashed outside. He tripped on the front step and went sprawling onto the leaf-strewn ground. Flipping over onto his back, he scrambled further away from the house. Suddenly a heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder, and Waylon screamed.


	5. Lonely Flesh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thank you to beastthemaestro @tumblr for making [this beautiful fanart of a scene from chapter three!](https://beastthemaestro.tumblr.com/post/634423624519041024/dont-you-believe-in-love-at-first-sight) Please go and check out their work because it is all gorgeous ❤

_Suddenly a heavy hand clamped onto his shoulder, and Waylon screamed._

“Whoa, easy there!” a voice said, and Waylon looked up into the face of his neighbour, Frank Manera. “You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Let me help you up.” Waylon had seen Frank a handful of times since he moved in and they usually exchanged a few polite words. Waylon didn’t know what he was doing at the house. He let Frank pull him to his feet and then looked back at the house. It looked… _normal_. No faces in the window, no dark aura like in a horror movie. It was almost enough for Waylon to doubt what he had just seen. “T-thanks,” he said.

“Here, you’re white as a sheet. Somethin’ happen?” Frank asked.

“No, no… Frank. Hi. What can I do for you?”

The man chuckled and said, “Wondered if you wanted to come watch the game with me and a few buddies. Ain’t right to be alone on the holidays.”

“How did you know…?”

Frank slung an arm around Waylon’s shoulder as though they were old friends. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “What do you say? We’ll have a few drinks, just kick back with the guys, huh?”

“Uhh…” Waylon glanced back at the house. “Actually,” he said. “That sounds great. I’d love to.”

Frank had parked his truck across the entrance to Waylon’s driveway. Waylon brushed various bits of trash and debris off the passenger seat and climbed in. The drive down to the old farm where Frank lived was quiet, a little awkward. Waylon stared out at the autumn trees, but his mind was racing. Eddie, his Eddie, who had become his friend and confidant and lover, had transformed into a nightmare before his eyes. He wanted to read that article again, he wanted to look up everything he could find about the “Groom” who had murdered four innocent women before meeting his own grisly end. He wanted to find some way for this to not be true—not his Eddie, surely it was a mistake—but Eddie had not denied it.

Frank’s place was exactly as run-down as Waylon guessed it would be. A tumbledown farmhouse stood in a yard strewn with discarded bits of machinery, trash bags, and old cars. From what Waylon understood, this had once been a much larger working farm, but the previous owner had sold up some decades ago, and Frank hadn’t had the taste for rearing pigs. Consequently, much of the land stood unused and reclaimed by the forest. Frank parked up near the house, so Waylon only got a brief look at the looming shape of the barn and the other dilapidated outbuildings before entering the farmhouse, which had a cramped front hallway but opened out into a spacious living room near the back of the building. A beer was put in his hand and he was introduced to Frank’s friends, who were a strange bunch. There was a big man who grunted his greeting, a slim man with dark hair and burn scars across his face, and a scrawny fellow who never made eye-contact yet stood too close. Waylon did his best to remember names even though his mind was still back at his own home, in the basement, replaying the terrible sight of his lover drenched in blood and with ice in his eyes. Frank and the big guy, Chris Walker, asked him questions about how he was settling into Leadville, how the family liked it, how was work. He mentioned that Lisa worked for the international pharmaceutical firm, Murkoff Inc, which had an office here in Leadville. Before Waylon knew it, he was drawn into a debate about the company’s effect on the town’s economy and all the nefarious activities it was supposedly up to. Waylon didn’t know anything about that. All he knew was that they developed medicines and that Lisa had been headhunted for a great position in the Business Development team.

“Yeah, haven’t you heard?” the man with the burns said. Waylon thought Frank had introduced him as “Pyro”, but that couldn’t be right. “They do all kinds of freaky experiments on people in that secret lab of theirs.”

“Secret lab?”

“Underneath the building,” Frank said with a waggle of his bushy eyebrows, but Chris snorted.

“Crazy conspiracy theories, that’s all that is,” the big man said before telling Waylon, “Don’t listen to that shit. Your brain’ll end up just as rotted as theirs.” This was met with a guffaw from Frank and a sulky glare from Pyro, while the fourth member of this group of oddballs muttered to himself too quietly to hear.

Bit by bit, and quite against his expectation, Waylon started to relax. The alcohol helped. Frank and his friends were rough around the edges, but at least Waylon got a few hours away from the house to put off dealing with the problem of Eddie. He ought to call Miles. Maybe he should call Lisa. How would that go? _Hi, honey, just thought you should know our house is haunted by the ghost of a serial killer, oh and by the way, I fucked him._

Yeah, right.

He’d had a couple of bottles by the time he excused himself to go to the bathroom. On his way back he took a wrong turn in the old farmhouse’s cramped corridors and turned a corner to find a man blocking his path. Waylon apologised for almost bumping into him and stepped back, but the man didn’t respond. He turned around to reveal a handsome tan face and staring dark eyes. He looked familiar, but if he was one of Frank’s friends, Waylon hadn’t been introduced.

“Are you all right?” Waylon said, and saw his breath puff into the frigid air. His skin pebbled as he felt as though a cold hand just ran down his back. The man continued to stare at him wordlessly. There was something about his dark, blank stare that made Waylon break out in a cold sweat. Waylon was about to simply leave when the man reached out towards him. As he did so, he transformed, just like Eddie. Blood ran from the top of his head down his face and his shirt ripped to reveal a gaping hole in his chest. The corridor filled with the stink of spoilt meat and Waylon fought not to retch. That was when Waylon realised where he recognised the man from.

“You were on the news,” he said. He had seen that face staring out of the TV screen numerous times over the past few weeks in news bulletins only half-watched, in the paper and in missing person posters pinned up all around town. All of Leadville had been searching for this man. “Raul Rosing, Rosen… Roset?”

Waylon started to move forward, but another look at the wound on Roset’s chest stopped him in his tracks. That was no ordinary wound, it was a gaping crater; Waylon saw glistening red meat and white bone, and an emptiness where a heart was meant to be. Whatever had happened to Raul Roset, he was beyond help now. Roset opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t. His throat had been cut. The ghost’s blank expression crumpled, and he started to weep blood. He reached out for Waylon again, but Waylon backed away in fear. His bloody face a study in despair, Roset turned to the window and pointed out towards a cluster of outbuildings.

“Park?” Waylon jerked around at the sound of Manera’s voice. “What’s takin’ you so long? You fall in?” Frank was still in the living room, laughing with the guys. When Waylon turned back, the ghost of Raul Roset was gone.

“Just a second,” he called with a tremor in his voice. “I, uh. I’m just gonna step outside to take a phone call.” That would buy him a little time to figure out what the hell had just happened. He found the back door and crept out as quietly as he could. Then, keeping out of sight of the living room windows, he crossed the yard. The barn door was secured with a thick chain and padlock, but one of the smaller buildings Roset had pointed to was open. While the barn was old and constructed of dark wooden planks, this building was thrown together out of corrugated iron and its door hung ajar as though beckoning Waylon to enter. The exterior was surrounded by piles of junk just like everywhere else—bags of rubbish and god knew what else, broken furniture and appliances, a single white plastic chair—and the ground approaching the door was churned to mud.

Waylon pushed open the door and was hit at once with the noxious smell of rotting meat. The building was long and narrow and dark, with only a single high window to let in the fading daylight. Squinting into the darkness, Waylon saw a workbench set along one dingy wall with a deeply stained wooden top, and beside that a cluster of tall freezers. The concrete floor was covered in dark splotches, and thick hooks hung from the ceiling on chains. Waylon covered his nose and mouth and ventured deeper into the awful, stinking room. He didn’t want to, but he had to know the truth… he had to confirm his awful suspicion before he could let himself leave. He crossed the floor, grimacing when the soles of his shoes stuck to the filthy surface, and opened one of the upright freezers and found himself one again face to face with Raul Roset, the missing man.

Or rather, with his head.

The freezer was packed with meat, some of it in cellophane-wrapped bundles, some just undisguised chunks, body parts jammed into the freezer shelves haphazardly like ready-meals and tubs of ice-cream. There were three freezers in this room, and God knew how many in the farmhouse. More than just one man’s worth of… meat. Waylon stared into Roset’s frozen, sightless eyes. _Right_ , he thought. Dimly, he heard a door open and close, footsteps in the yard. _Perhaps I won’t stay for dinner._

He hastily reached into his back pocket for his phone, but it wasn’t there. He checked his other pockets with a sense of rising panic and then groaned; he must have dropped it when he was running from Eddie, after confronting him with the article about his crimes. He swore under his breath and darted back to the door. Peering outside, he saw Manera across the yard. He watched him until he prowled around to the other side of the farmhouse, and then Waylon made a run for the truck. The driver’s window was open, but when Waylon reached in to check for the keys they were nowhere to be found.

“Park, where’d you get to?” he heard Frank call. _Shit_ , he was coming around again. Waylon ducked out of sight just as Frank reappeared. “It’s rude to skip out before dinner,” Frank said. “Don’t make us wait. I need to feed…” Waylon crouched by one of the truck’s wheels. Frank hadn’t seen him yet, but he had Waylon trapped between him and the house. He went to the metal shack Waylon had just left and went inside. Waylon considered using the phone in the house to call 911, but Frank’s friends were in there. How could he be sure they weren’t in on whatever madness Manera was planning? Waylon couldn’t take the risk they didn’t know exactly what—or who—Frank was planning on serving them for their Thanksgiving meal.

When Frank reappeared from his makeshift slaughterhouse, he had something in his hand, but Waylon couldn’t make out what it was. “I know you’re close,” the maniac called out. “I can smell you.”

“What the fuck?” Waylon whispered. He crept around the truck as Manera patrolled the yard, keeping out of sight, until he happened to glance toward the house to find the big guy staring out of the front window straight at him. Walker gave Waylon a nasty grin that looked more like an animal baring its teeth and then slammed his meaty fist against the casement.

The noise drew Frank’s attention, and the next moment the bearded man popped around the end of the truck with a gleeful shout. “Found you!”

Waylon ran. Manera whooped and hollered after him, but Waylon hit the tree line at full pelt and didn’t stop. He hadn’t ventured into the woods much since moving and he didn’t know them well, but all he thought about was getting as far away from Frank and his friends as possible. The ground was covered with a thick blanket of fallen leaves which disguised tree roots and rocks, which Waylon discovered when his foot hooked beneath a root and he tripped down a bank. He fell end over end before coming to rest in a muddy creek bed. When he pushed himself back to his feet his ankle twisted under him and he let out a yelp of pain and fell onto all fours. He stood again, using a nearby tree to support himself this time, and tried to put his weight on his hurt ankle only to wince when pain shot up his leg. Sprained, maybe broken.

But he couldn’t stop.

A crackle behind him made him whirl around and then immediately drop back down. Through the trees he saw the hulking shape of Manera’s friend, Chris Walker. He didn’t seem to have seen Waylon yet. Waylon pressed himself flat against the ground and held his breath, praying he wouldn’t come this way. He heard Walker’s heavy footsteps, the leaves crunching beneath his boots, and as he got closer, he heard the man muttering to himself. Waylon peeked over the top of the bank he had fallen down and saw the man a handful of feet away. He would be found in a matter of moments.

Just then he heard Manera’s voice call out, and Walker turned back towards the house. Growling under his breath, he stomped away, and Waylon let out the breath he had been holding. He wiped anxious tears from his eyes and then carefully, quietly, got back to his feet after making sure none of Frank’s friends were within sight. He turned in the opposite direction Walker had gone and started to limp.

It was dark by the time he made it back to his house. He’d gotten turned around a few times in the woods, and he was forced to walk at a snail’s pace because of the increasing agony in his ankle. It had swollen up and felt like it was on fire, but he couldn’t afford to let it stop him. Even if Frank or Chris didn’t catch up to him, it wasn’t safe to get stuck out in the woods after dark without water or a light. When he saw light through the trees he sighed in relief. He must have forgotten to turn the lights out when he ran out of there. _Had that really happened?_ The memory of confronting Eddie in the basement felt distant and unreal, just like one of his nightmares. Well, he only needed to use the phone. He didn’t plan to linger long enough for the psychopathic spook to cause a problem.

He reached the edge of the woods and was about to cross the front yard to the door when the sound of an engine buzzed through the quiet night. Waylon ducked back out of sight behind a tree just in time to see a truck pull into the driveway, high beams lancing through the dark, and park at an angle behind Waylon’s car. Waylon recognised Frank’s beaten-up old truck with a sinking feeling. Manera had the front window rolled down and the radio on; Waylon heard him humming along with the tune. He wasn’t bothered about being seen, clearly, or making a noise. Of course, there was no need—the house was remote, which was one of the reasons Waylon and Lisa had chosen it. They had left the big city behind for peace and quiet and room for the kids to roam. Waylon regretted that now. He was on his own.

Frank turned off the engine and climbed out of the truck. A small mercy was that he had apparently left his friends behind. He had that tool in his hand again, only this time Waylon was closer so that when he turned it on, with a hair-raising, screeching buzz, he could see just what it was: a cordless hand-held saw with a circular blade. He looked up at the house and chuckled to himself. Waylon pressed himself flush to the ground as Frank prowled the front yard, peered into the windows, and then ultimately disappeared round the side of the house. He heard that saw go again and it made his blood run cold.

Waylon limped over to Frank’s truck first. It was a long shot, but if he could take that he could get away without needing to face the madman again. Unfortunately, when he got to the driver’s side window, he saw that Frank had taken the keys with him. Now there was nothing left but to venture inside.

He climbed the front steps as quietly as he could, eyes and ears peeled for any sign of his neighbour. He had left in such a hurry earlier that he had forgotten to lock the front door, and he thanked God for small mercies now. The light was on in the entrance hall, and everything looked disconcertingly normal. Waylon went straight to the phone on the console table and dialled 911, only to inwardly curse when there was no sound on the line. He hit redial a couple of times, but to no avail. Looking down, he saw that the cable to the wall had been cut. His eyes went to the basement door and then away again. There was another landline upstairs Frank might not have got to. He moved towards the base of the stairs but stumbled when the screech of Manera’s saw sliced through the air. He heard footsteps now, in another room, and heard Frank yell out, “I know you’re here, meat! I can smell you.”

“What the _fuck_?” Waylon whispered, before beating a hasty retreat into the living room as Frank came out of the kitchen. Waylon crouched behind the sofa and held his breath.

“You can’t hide,” Frank drawled. “Meat… Lonely flesh…”

Waylon listened to the creak of Frank’s foot on the floorboards; he knew that creaky board and knew from the sound of it that Frank was about to come into the room with him. Within seconds he would be discovered, and with his injured ankle he couldn’t hope to run. He closed his eyes and bowed his head. He had never been a praying man and he didn’t start now, but he did call to mind the faces of his loved ones and cast a grateful thought to the heavens that Lisa, Mike, and Aiden weren’t there to share his fate.

“Gorgeous,” Manera groaned. Waylon could picture him slavering at the mouth. “Just the smell—” He stopped, and the floorboard creaked again as he stepped back. Waylon looked up, but he was still hidden. Something else had grabbed Manera’s attention. Waylon stilled and listened; there, it came again—a thump from upstairs. Manera laughed, a horribly wet, phlegmy sound, and said, “I see. You’re hungry for it too. Ready… wanting…”

Waylon had his hand pressed over his mouth by the time Manera moved away from the door, and he didn’t move until the man had lumbered upstairs after the source of that mysterious noise. Then he rose and returned to the hallway. The upstairs phone was out of the question with Frank up there. His best option now was to retrieve his cell phone from the basement and just hope Eddie left him alone.

When he fled earlier, he had been in a panic after just being faced with Eddie’s bloody countenance and confronted with the truth of his ghostly lover’s horrific past. Closing the basement door behind him, let alone locking it, had been the last thing on his mind, and yet, when he turned to that door now, he found it not only shut but also safely padlocked. He could open the door a couple of inches but no further. Resisting the urge to rattle the damned lock or try to force it, he tried to think where he might have put the key. It usually lived on a hook near the front door, with all the other household keys, but when he looked there the hook was empty. That wasn’t so unusual; things frequently went missing around the house, only to turn up in some unlikely place a few days or even weeks later. He used to think he was just absent-minded, but now he suspected it was Billy or another spook playing tricks. He wished the ghost had picked a less deadly time to play this game.

He tried the kitchen first, frantically opening drawers and peering under appliances. His ankle screamed out in pain the whole time, so that by the time he finally spied the key hanging on an old hook on the back porch he was biting his lip bloody to avoid crying out. The back door had fallen victim to Frank’s saw and hung open. Waylon went out and snatched the key, but when he turned to re-enter the house, he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and the screech of the saw. He hid under the table, holding his breath once more as Frank entered the kitchen.

“I know you’re close,” Frank chuckled. “You think you’re so clever…” Waylon waited until he stepped out into the darkness before he moved. He kept low, moving as quickly and quietly as he could back into the entrance hall and to the basement door. He shakily inserted the key and let out a breath, thinking perhaps he would make it through this alive after all.

Then everything happened at once.

There was a loud crash which startled him into dropping the key, and a careless movement of his foot sent the key skittering across the polished wood floor and out of reach. Frank bellowed, “Dinner bells!” and burst into the hallway with a manic grin splitting his face and his saw upraised. Waylon’s ankle twisted beneath him when he tried to flee and he fell, knees hitting the floor hard. Frank grabbed the back of Waylon’s neck and yanked him upright. He was surprisingly strong for such a thin man, and he hefted Waylon around like a ragdoll. He slammed Waylon face-first into the basement door hard enough to bloody Waylon’s nose and leave him seeing stars. Then Frank’s hand was in Waylon’s hair and he was forcing his head back and Waylon looked up into his wild eyes, felt his foul breath on his face. The friendly neighbour act had been just a mask, Waylon saw; _this_ was the real Frank Manera. “Look how you bleed for me,” Frank crooned. He slammed Waylon into the door once more, and this time it was hard enough to splinter the wood. Waylon tried to shield his head, but the next blow split the old wood and sent him tumbling hand over foot down the stairs beyond. He hit the concrete at the bottom and grunted, immediately rolling over and beginning to drag himself away, half blinded by blood. Frank stood silhouetted in the broken doorway above and laughed.

“Mine!” Frank yelled triumphantly. “Now you’re mine!”

Waylon tried to get to his feet and failed. His head was ringing, it was a wonder he was still conscious. He fell against a set of shelves and set the whole thing crashing down as he tried to get deeper into the basement and away from Frank. Even if he found his phone now, Frank would be on him before help could come. Frank was descending the steps now, slashing his saw against the banister and the wall. Waylon kept moving, half crawling and half falling, until he reached the back wall and curled up beneath Eddie’s worktable. Frank didn’t hurry. He was stalking Waylon as surely as a lion hunted its prey, and from the curve of his grin, visible as a flash of white teeth in the dimness, he was enjoying every moment. Waylon saw his phone the moment Frank reached the bottom of the stairs. It lay in the open, face-down. Waylon grabbed it and retreated under the shadow of the table once more. Frank clambered over piles of junk and pushed aside shelves Waylon had toppled. Waylon didn’t think he had seen where Waylon hid, but it was only a matter of time. The phone had a big crack across its screen and the battery had become dislodged when he’d dropped it. He clicked it back into place, wincing at the sound, and waited frantically for the device to power on. He was startled by the bright light of the screen when it woke up, but even if he had covered it, it would be too late. Frank had already found him.

“All mine,” Frank purred as he paced slowly towards the table, the saw quiet in his hand. All the muscles in Waylon’s body tensed in readiness to bolt. If he rushed him, he might be able to barge past Manera before he got a chance to cut his heart out. He didn’t fool himself into thinking he would get far, but he owed it to his family to try.

He screwed up his courage and launched himself out of his hiding spot, ignoring the pain in his ankle, and shoved Manera with all his weight. For a moment it worked, but Waylon didn’t get more than a step away before Manera grabbed him and yanked him back. He fisted the front of Waylon’s shirt with one hand, and with the other he activated the saw and raised it above his head.

The temperature in the room plummeted, just as though Waylon had plunged into a pool of icy water. His gaze moved from the saw blade to Manera’s face, and when an ugly bark of laughter burst from his throat, his breath puffed out of his mouth in a visible swirl of vapour. It made Manera pause. Scowling, the madman snarled, “What are you laughing at, meat?”

Waylon tried to stop laughing, he really did, but the more he bottled it up the more forcefully it bubbled out of him. “You!” he told Manera, who still held the rotating saw blade poised to remove Waylon’s head. If Manera hadn’t been holding him up by his shirt he would have doubled over. “I’m laughing at you, you piece of shit,” he said. “You’re fucked.”

With an enraged roar Frank swung the saw at Waylon’s head, but before the blade could bite into Waylon’s skin Frank’s arm stopped in mid-air as though gripped by an unseen hand. Then he was jerked backwards and the weapon was torn from his hand. He lost his grip on Waylon, who moved backwards until he could lean against the worktable. From there, Waylon watched Manera turn this way and that as he tried to strike at an invisible assailant. Cuts appeared on his face and arms, and then his chest and back, appearing in the dark as black smudges where the blood soaked through his shirt. Just when the man was frantic with confusion and stuck all over with shallow cuts, his attacker finally showed himself. Eddie appeared just as he had the first time Waylon saw him. His face was stark white against the shadows and pulled into a dreadful, deranged smile, and he was splattered with blood from head to toe with his guts spilling out of his belly. He towered over Frank, seeming bigger than Waylon had ever seen him, and his eyes blazed with satisfaction as Frank yelled and swore in fear.

He didn’t give Frank time to say much, however. He gripped Frank’s skinny neck in one enormous hand and lifted him off the ground. Frank struggled, kicked, scratched, and punched, but none of his attacks could connect. His hands slipped straight through Eddie as though he wasn’t there. Eddie held him up for a moment before looking down at something he held in his other hand. What little light there was glinted on the edge of a knife.

Eddie looked past his prey then, and his eyes locked with Waylon’s. Perhaps there was a question there; did he want Waylon’s permission? Waylon thought about the way Frank and his friends had hunted Waylon through the trees like an animal, thought about the freezers packed to bursting, and about the anguish on Raul Roset’s face, and then he inclined his head. A shudder went through Eddie’s big body, and the look on his face turned to something like adoration. Then he returned his attention to Frank and buried his knife deep in the man’s belly. He stabbed Manera again and again with vicious, driving thrusts that turned his guts into mincemeat, and when Frank was limp and twitching, he dropped him to the floor and brought his foot down on his head. Waylon didn’t look away, even though the sound of Manera’s skull cracking open like an egg made him sick.

In the silence after Frank died, Waylon and Eddie’s eyes met. Only hours ago, Waylon had fled from him in fear; now Waylon couldn’t think of a more welcome sight. Everything Waylon had accused him of was true. Eddie was a killer, a monster... and he had saved Waylon's life.

There was uncertainty in Eddie’s gaze, and beneath the gore his face betrayed a vulnerability that was utterly at odds with the violence he had just perpetrated. "Darling?" he said.

“Eddie,” Waylon sighed and reached for him. His head swam as all the terror and exhaustion he’d been keeping at bay while fleeing for his life came crashing back on top of him, and he began to topple. Eddie was there to catch him in an instant. The same hands that were just used to kill a man now held Waylon tenderly and cradled him against Eddie’s broad body. Waylon clung onto Eddie and pressed his face against his chest, not caring that he would get blood all over himself, and finally allowed himself to cry. Eddie held him while he sobbed, and then he lifted Waylon gently in his arms and carried him upstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the unplanned hiatus! This _was_ intended to be the final chapter, but I realised as I worked on it that I was trying to rush an ending that I really ought to take time over. So, there will be one more part after this one. Thank you everyone for your patience, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter 💖


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